How Usable is YOUR World?

I enjoyed my first Auckland Web Meetup that was held in downtown Auckland, July 2nd. We were quite a bunch (about 150) to learn from the 3 speakers. The last one talked about how it was to be a Cyber Lions judge at the Cannes Lions. It wasn’t technical but I liked it because it was about creativity. I got a grasp of what worldwide marketing firms have done to push a product. It’s quite refreshing to see how companies are getting their clients involved.

Greg Wood presented few winners in the Cyber Lions category. One of the 3 Grand Prize was the Fiat Eco-Drive. The software analyses your acceleration, deceleration, gear changes and speed and award you a mark out of 100 based on how efficient you drove. As you will see in the following clip, Eco-Drive helps the driver understands his behaviours and then provides hints about how to make appropriate changes.

This is the kind of innovative project that I would love being part in the future because:

• You need to create a pretty good overall user experience to influence drivers to plug their USB key every time they drive and then transfer their data to their computer.
• The goal of the software is to help them change their driving behaviours which is not an easy task. In fact, it may take up to several months and years for somebody to change their behaviours. As we know in human factors engineering, we adapt the interface and the system to the user and not the opposite. In that case, the challenge is to design software that will be used to change drivers’ behaviours.
• It tackles a huge modern issue: high levels of fuel consumption. Eco-Drive aims to teach the driver to be more fuel efficient.

At the end, I believe it will work, because drivers will use it like a game to see if they do better from one month to the other and, as a side effect, drivers will eventually reduce a bit their fuel consumption which will have an impact on their driving cost. I don’t know what’s the premium to have the Fiat Eco-Drive (compare to a similar car), but in any cases, it will eventually cost less to design and to implement and it will be generalised to several car brands.

If you want to learn more, visit the Fiat Eco-Drive website.

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Conference by Olivier Lorrain