an introduction
To start, some background context. I own a 2014 Ford Focus, and recently it had a catastrophic engine failure, unrelated to anything I had done. I purchased it from a dealer, so they then gave me a courtesy car whilst they investigated / fixed mine. They gave me a 2024 Ford Focus ST-line, a significant upgrade, or so I thought.
First impressions were very good, given the decade in advancement there were plentiful interior improvements with the new model. The interior was a lot more minimal, having much fewer physical buttons than you might expect. This is where my inspiration for this post came from.
the screen
After orienting myself with the car, I rather quickly realised that almost everything that isn't critical (and thus on the wheel) is done through the large screen in the centre of the dashboard. This includes all climate controls, all infotainment (there is media controls on the wheel however) and all extra heating configurations (seats, the wheel, ...). Initially, this seems sensible, right? You eliminate a bunch of buttons that take up space and replace them with a single interface, right? Wrong.
Aside from the UI being questionable, whereby all the elements are very close together and designed to be as hard as possible to use whilst driving (which, you must, unless you have a passenger to do it for you). All the buttons are tiny and have very little margin between them, this is made particularly bad by the screen itself being rather wide, requiring a stretch for me to reach to the other side, where some controls lie.
This whole annoyance is escalated by the lack of a hand rest below the screen for when you want to interact with it. My own has this and I sure took it for granted until I didn't have it. Not having anywhere to rest your hand, particularly whilst in motion, makes it incredibly hard to press things accurately on the screen.
accessibility
As much as it annoys me, these issues aren't deal breaking for me, aside from the fact I won't own it permanently. I can still use the systems just fine, but it does make me wonder, how would someone with disability be able to use this?
I mean, I think of people in my family who are not particularly tech oriented, trying to teach them how to use this seems like an impossible task.
I also think of those with muscular or joint issues, such as Arthritis. How are they going to be able to reach those tiny buttons, particularly when in motion?
I haven't spoken to anyone I know to see what other difficulties they may face when using such a system, but even this cursory analysis reveals some serious oversight within the product development cycle here.
to conclude
I'm mostly curious to see what other people think of this, and how they feel it will impact the whole market going forward. This is just one small snippet of my experience, as I won't be keeping it long term. It is just astounding to me that a car that starts at £30, 000 can have such a miserable UX experience.
Safe to say I'll be much happier when my old one gets fixed, so I can have my physical buttons back.