two SF car events (Alameda+BMW's joystick)

["Luke M. Kowalski" <interfaces@domain.elided>]

...if you happen to be in the Bay Area, here are
two events that you might be interested in, and I should be at one of
them with my 250 GTE (I had the 74 Alfa Spider there, last year).
I will be wearing the mangled throw out bearing as a pendant (this very
T/O bearing prevented me from showing the car at Concorso Italiano).
:)

1. A lecture about interface design in cars at the (once) famous XEROX
PARC next Tuesday eve, 7.30-9.30, October 8th. It is also going to
include a lecture on usability standards in ISO, a perfect nap
opportunity for car (but not HF) folks. This one is free, me
thinks...PARC's George E. Pake
Auditorium
3333 Coyote Hill Road, Palo Alto, CA

The BMW 745i and AUDI A8: If Only the Interface was as Well-Designed as
the Suspension
Jef Raskin


2. Alameda (East Bay) Special Olympics Italian car show next Sunday,
the 13th.
Goes from 9-3pm, Alameda Middle School, 880N, exit High Street, go
left, another left after
funny bridge (Fernside), 1 mile down on the left.


More details on 1:

The BMW 745i and AUDI A8: If Only the Interface was as Well-Designed as
the Suspension
Jef Raskin
The BMW 745i is an $80,000 luxury sedan with every amenity except an
outhouse. Of the 745i's some 700 features, many are accessed via a
central display screen and a force-feedback "haptic" knob. Jef
got to
test this vehicle for a few days, and, while the software never
crashed, one of the many interface design errors put him within inches
of going over a cliff with the car. He will be reporting on his driving
experience.
Since Jef drove the BMW, Audi sent him information on their new A8
interface, which is similar. When he gave them a somewhat negative
report, they blamed it on the Blechbieger. If you don't speak German,
you will learn what a Blechbieger is, see photos of the dashboards of
three cars, and learn some of the good and bad points of the
interfaces.
For openers, Jef will very briefly explain how you can download and use
a part of the software discussed in his book "The Humane
Interface."
The software is open source and on the Web.
Jef Raskin is an interface design consultant and writer who is best
known for having created the Macintosh project at Apple.

thx, luke
Belmont, CA
http://www.guigui.com/cars.htm

74 Alfa Spider
98 Audi A6 Q
63 Ferrari 250 GTE
03 Ford truck
New DSL Internet Access from SBC & Yahoo!
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