

How the design of a BMW Motorcycle affects your App - jsatok
http://www.rypple.com/blog/2009/08/14/turn-signals/

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gamache
I wrote this comment for the blog but I am unsure that it posted correctly
there:

BMW Motorrad is similar to Apple in many ways:

* Both were early players in their respective markets. Moreso than many other manufacturers, they have a lot of history to draw from.

* Both are known for their design and sense of style. A BMW motorcycle, like an Apple device, is almost instantly recognizable once you know the visual cues of each.

* Both are premium products at premium prices, designed against disposability. A BMW motorcycle and an Apple computer will typically outlast 2-3 of the average competitor's products, while costing about 1.5x as much.

* Both have absolutely rabid followings, winning the kind of fanaticism you can only produce by decades of selling beautiful products that perform beautifully.

The BMW turn signals map closely to the Apple 1-button mouse. Is it the most
functional design? Nah. But the customers barely care. The design is
functional enough, and it conjures the brand very effectively.

Here, both BMW and Apple "missed" the waves of standardization to user
controls; their controls were always good enough from the start, however, and
since the users didn't make a stink about it, both highly successful
manufacturers left well enough alone.

Looking from our vantage point in the present, sure, someone moving to a BMW
or Apple interface will notice a few differences (or, in your words, it will
be "inconsistent with virtually every other"). But when you look at it from
the point in time at which these interfaces were designed, both were
groundbreaking and best-of-breed. Macs had a mouse when their closest
competitors would draw some text like "C:>" and drool at you. BMW had foot-
shift and hand-clutch when their closest competitors had suicide-shift and
clutch pedals. It took another 40 or 50 years for motorcycles to agree upon
right-hand throttle, even.

Personally, I don't buy the left-brain/right-brain argument you put forth, and
I consider the danger pretty low because turn signals get the absolutely
lowest priority when I am riding and need to react to emerging situations
(that's pretty-talk for "when the dude in the F-150 aims at me suddenly"). I
ride a Honda and I am pleased with the left-thumb directional controls, but I
bet I could get used to a BMW pretty quickly.... and any donations to test
this theory are gratefully accepted. But in any case, I think you need to see
some more of the history behind the controls before you can use them as a UI
teaching tool.

~~~
sound2man
"* Both are premium products at premium prices, designed against
disposability. A BMW motorcycle and an Apple computer will typically outlast
2-3 of the average competitor's products, while costing about 1.5x as much."

I disagree with this. While the design of the a macbook is nicer than any
other laptop I can think of, I had to replace the motherboard, optical drive,
wrist rest, LCD panel, trackpad, and webcam before it was three years old.
Granted I did use it extensively, but I don't think that my usage would have
destroyed a Dell latitude or Lenovo Thinkpad any quicker. In fact, I am
expecting my current Dell E6500 to last longer than may macbook did.

~~~
tjogin
I'm sure you realize that whatever happened to your particular machine is not
necessarily indicative of all machines from the same manufacturer.

------
jacquesm
What a load of bull. Pardon my French.

That's just a contrived hook, and it's wrong on top of that.

If you're driving a bike you'll know this: 2/3rds of your brake power comes
from the front wheel, if you're in a turn _and_ you need your front wheel
brake that badly you are in big trouble. Most likely you'll end up on the
pavement.

Turning and braking are done separately, and during emergency evasive
maneuvers (the lorry pulling out) signaling is the least of your worries.

The sequence normally is:

\- check your lanes

\- indicate your turn

\- wait for a bit to get the rest of the traffic to notice your turn signal

\- meanwhile, reduce speed and shift down if appropriate

\- make your move

So what if one bike brand does it different than others ? Bike users - unlike
web visitors - are adaptable creatures, they know their bikes inside out.

~~~
wuj3888
I think you may have missed the point.

Under normal circumstances, one should not brake and turn. But neither should
cage drivers turn left in front of you. Or merge into your lane. Or run yellow
lights. This stuff happens on the road, and this why so many riders get hurt.

To think that the normal sequence of events is the only one worth designing
for is naive.

The post was about how to consider the human context when designing, and used
the bike as an example. Any design decision that could delay a rider's
reaction time to the primary brake is a bad idea, regardless of how familiar
you are with your bike or how adaptable you may be.

~~~
jacquesm
Sure, but there is no proof that the design of the bike really is worse, just
his personal preference.

When designing websites there is a good case to be made for sticking to the
familiar (unless you want to make a point) but to use motor cycle design
(especially BMW, one of the most renowned bike brands on the planet with a lot
more design credit than the author) as an example is poorly chosen.

The whole idea is that you have the thumb of your right hand pretty much in
that spot _anyway_ , so no reaction time is lost, rather the opposite, you
don't have to make that awkward reset motion with your left hand in order to
switch off the blinkers after having made a right hand turn.

This is _more_ convenient, not less convenient.

~~~
eru
Do you really have to reset the blinkers after turning? (I've never driven a
motor cycle, but cars reset automatically just fine.)

~~~
10ren
Yes.

BTW: Cars blinkers don't reset when changing lanes. There's also that joke
about solving the problem of indicating left and forgetting about it. The
solution is that if you haven't turned left after 15 seconds, the car
_automatically_ turns left.

~~~
eru
Thanks for enlightening me.

------
jasongullickson
Maybe this is an oversimplification, but I think the point of the article is
"if you're going to do something in a non-standard way, there should be a
reason", and the author didn't see an obvious reason for BMW's deviation.

As a motorcyclist I don't see an immediate, obvious advantage to the BMW
approach vs. the standard approach but like most things on motorcycles, you
may need to actually _use_ it before it makes sense to you.

So it looks like I now have an excuse to spend some time riding Beemers...

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sharkey
BEEP! Oh, sorry, just trying to readjust to Honda controls ...

Anyway, I never found 3. to be a problem on my R100GS (w/ early K-style
controls) but I think there's another really important point here: supporting
those three buttons requires a whole mess of relays, latches and so on, in a
black box the size of a couple of packs of cigs, hidden away under the tank.
If it fails, like mine did, there's no way to do a roadside repair. It's a
black box, literally.

Whereas the standard setup has one simple mechanical switch and one flasher
can and not many wires. Its very simple to diagnose and you can get a new
flasher can anywhere for $5.

The appropriate BMW slogan: "Why simple, when complicated works?"

------
JimmyL
One of my favorite design-of-everyday-things examples is tiller-controlled
outboard motors, like the one seen at <http://bit.ly/3Aftns>, and in
particular, the ones where the forward/reverse control is integrated into the
tiller (as opposed to a separate shifting lever).

With those engines, there's a very direct connection between the user's
movements (moving the tiller) and the way the boat moves in response. It's not
immediately obvious, but it becomes natural once you create a mental model
around it - in the same way that using a turn signal on a car isn't
immediately obvious (why does moving a swingarm down equate with going left?).

The real part I like, however, comes with reversing. As opposed to having to
explicitly shift gears, simply turn the throttle in the opposite direction as
you do to accelerate. Counter-clockwise to accelerate, clockwise to slow down,
and keep turning it clockwise (through a safety stop) and you'll end up going
backwards, which you can consider the extreme manifestation of slowing down
(you have slowed so much you have negative forward velocity).

~~~
wuj3888
Interesting example! Especially because the steering element of these motors
is so counter intuitive - you push left to go right and vice versa :-)

I agree with you about the direct connection between the user's movements and
the speed, but the direction of the twist required to go forward/backward is
fairly arbitrary (it seems), so it must be learned rather than 'intuited'.

~~~
JimmyL
The steering element is, I find, initially counter-intuitive. But my first
time driving one of these boats I looked at the engine, saw how it moved where
the thrust "pointed", and then it became entirely intuitive - I just needed to
build the right model for how the high-level system worked, in order to get an
intuitive feeling for the lower-level details.

As for the throttle, you're quite right - the twist direction to go forwards
is arbitrary, but the rotating all the way in the opposite direction to
reverse (which is what I wanted to highlight) makes much more intuitive sense
to me than throttling down to zero, moving a lever, and then throttling back
up again.

~~~
modeless
I have driven a piece of farm equipment (bin carrier) which has a pedal that
works this way. The pedal is on a pivot and instead of depressing the whole
pedal you press on the top to go forward and the bottom to go back. Braking is
a simple matter of pressing the pedal in the opposite direction you are going
(though normal mechanical brakes are also present as backup).

I found the system to be rather touchy. When coming to a stop it was quite
easy to overcompensate and start oscillating back and forth. It was quite fun
to drive though, and for the kind of work a bin carrier does the ability to
reverse without changing gears is very useful.

Incidentally, in order to achieve this continuously adjustable drive a diesel
engine runs at a constant RPM turning a hydraulic pump which in turn drives
hub motors in each wheel. The whole thing makes a very distinctive sound as it
drives around.

<http://www.shakermaker.com/bin-carrier-images.php>

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dabeeeenster
I've never understood why there's no standard position for the indicator stalk
on cars - some are on the left of the steering wheel, some on the right...

~~~
jacquesm
Funny, I have driven quite a few cars, even right hand drive ones and they
_all_ had the indicator stalk on the left hand side.

What brands have the indicator stalk on the right ?

I've seen different arrangements for the wipers and the headlight switches
though (sometimes on the stalk, sometimes on the dash, left & right).

~~~
xelfer
Almost every single car in Australia (besides exotic/rarer european imports)
has it on the right. From personal experience, my father had a ferrari which
had it on the left, my brother had a Smart car which had it on the left, but
everything else I've driven (20+ cars) had it on the right (all right hand
drive cars).

~~~
jacquesm
Neat! Do they switch the place of the pedals as well ?

'Normally' (depending on your definition of 'normal') it is clutch on the
left, brakes in the middle and accelerator on the right foot.

Funny how they would do that different than even in the UK, where all cars
I've seen had their indicator stalks on the left.

It seems to be more of a regional thing than anything else.

Makes me wonder what Japan is like... (they also drive on the left).

~~~
jac_no_k
Hello from Tokyo Japan.

On Japanese cars ( right hand drive ), all the stalks are reversed from the
exported left hand drive model. This means that Japan cars have the turn
signal on the right, upward motion signaling a left turn and downward a right
turn. The shifter is of course in the middle console, so is on the drivers
left. The wiper control stalk is on the left. The ignition control is on the
right.

I am curious if the motorcycle controls are reversed though. I guess I'll find
that out in a few months.

~~~
shrikant
Remembering "upward - left, downward - right" is a pain, imho, the WRONG way
to do it.

Much easier to remember any turn indicator for cars is always _in the
direction of the turn of the steering wheel_. This helped me immensely when I
moved back from Oman (cars and roads the American way) to India (everything
the UK way). And also, this way I only had to re-learn the location of the
indicator stalk, so that I could avoid flipping on the windshield wipers :-)

p.s: Are there ANY cars that do not follow the "direction of steering wheel"
rule for their indicator stalks? Would be interesting to know this..

~~~
superkarn
Direction of the TOP of the steering wheel. Doesn't work if you look at the
bottom.

~~~
Nwallins
Eh? If the stalk is mounted radially from the centerline of the steering
wheel, you move the it in the same direction (clockwise or counter-) as the
steering wheel.

e.g. To turn left, you turn the steering wheel counter-clockwise and likewise
with the turn indicator. The 'top' or 'bottom' of the wheel is irrelevant.

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nessence
There's a significant problem with the theories behind this post. You have to
engage the clutch to break hard or you're going to stall the bike. In fact,
many times, acceleration will get you out of as many problems as breaking.
Horn is more important to me anyways - they should all be WAY louder.

A better option is an auto-canceling turn signal which I'm sure too expensive,
for now. Until then, for either design, the suck is going to depend on
finger/thumb size.

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bmwbud
Very amusing discussion. In particular regarding front wheel braking. You guys
really have a sense of humor.

------
hs
when i ride a motorcycle, i rarely use turn sign ... i literally use my head
to turn

i don't even use the mirrors because turning my head eliminates blind spots

car and bike riders here understand (and accustomed to) what it means when an
object in front of them slows down while its rider's helmet turn to left/right

but of course it's not safe :( so maybe a better solution is a bike with
accelerometer built in (like in iPhone) so the sign flashes whenever i tilt my
bike accordingly

~~~
lallysingh
If the sign flashes when you're already turning, it's pretty much too late,
don'tyathink? At that point an observer may think that you're signalling a
_second_ turn.

~~~
shrikant
Amen, dude. [http://shr1k.blogspot.com/2009/07/open-letter-to-
motorists.h...](http://shr1k.blogspot.com/2009/07/open-letter-to-
motorists.html)

