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Good UI in Real Life -- Audi Radio
written by Steven Bristol on January 19th, 2009
While my car’s been in the shop, I’ve been driving around in a rented Audi A4. I’ve been very pleased with many aspects of the car but I’ve been surprised with a bit of really good UI in the radio. They take a departure from the typical radio’s on/off function and realize that on/off is really the same as mute. This means that I can turn the radio on from the steering wheel controls! Here is how the UI works:
- Clicking off turns off the radio, just as you’d expect.
- Clicking on returns it too its last state, just as you’d expect.
- Turning the volume all the way down shows a mute icon.
- When off, turning the volume up turns the radio on. ** This is very cool.
My only complaint is that they didn’t quite go far enough. They could have easily made turning the volume all the way down turn the radio off instead of mute, that way if you click the on/off button it could turn the volume up just a bit. The reality is that the mute function is a non function and could be entirely removed from the radio. Mute is the same as off.
FYI: It took me forever to figure out the UI on the A/C.
For me, mute = off, so I turn the radio off when I want, for example, to yell at my kids. My wife, however, when it’s her turn to yell (at me, the kids, the dogs, passing pedestrians, whoever) turns the volume down to zero, despite this involving rotating the volume/on-off knob instead of just pressing it.
I never fail to be confused, should I be the next driver after she’s arrived home still in yell-mode, that I can’t get the damn radio to work.
She doesn’t get thermostats either.
Actually, I think she’s just retaining an old mental model: in olden times the normal case was to turn the volume right down until it clicked off. So mute actually was off. She’s just failed to revise that model because she isn’t a geek and isn’t interested in stupid talk like “revise mental model”, she just wants the damn radio to be quiet when she’s yelling.