pad-e

pad-e - all of the most used car functions are at your fingertips

Our project brings all of the most crucial car functions closer to you than ever before. With one press of the paddle behind a steering wheel, you can access the A/C menu or car settings menu, which then, you can operate with a scroll wheel that is right under your thumb. The whole system is designed to be as intuitive and fast to operate as possible. Because of that, it increases your satisfaction and, what is more important, your safety while driving.

Understand the problem

With the digitization of car user interfaces, haptic-based interactions between a car and a driver have decreased significantly. More and more automotive companies change physical buttons for centrally placed touch screens. But as studies show, as a result, secondary interactions with a car take more time than they used to, causing a decrease in driver and passenger safety and overall user satisfaction. On behalf of that, we have started with extensive research and user testing on cars like Seat Leon or Mustang Mach-E. It gave us the ability to fully understand the strengths and weaknesses of currently existing solutions. Going further, we interviewed people from all over Europe to understand which functions they use and how they use them. The results of the first phase gave us a strong foundation for the development phase.

Develop the idea

The next step that we took was to combine all the research we have collected to develop a unique solution. We focused on the possible usage of paddle shifters behind a steering wheel. In an e-car, they can be used for any chosen interaction since there is no longer a need for gear changing with an electric powertrain. Pared with a scroll wheel on the steering wheel that also can flip right and left we had an interaction input system that gave us the ability to start developing our user interface for a screen behind a steering wheel. While doing it, our goal was to provide all the needed information in a way that doesn’t overwhelm the driver. We have also put extensive effort to make it as easy to operate and understand as it can be. The crucial phase was actual user testing. Testing our interface in the real driving scenario provided us with information we could not get any other way. Thanks to that we could track the weaknesses of our solution and eliminate them.

pad-e

Instead of putting every function to the central touch screen, pad-e brings everything you need as close to you as possible - to the steering wheel. It combines a clean and modern design approach of the steering wheel and user interface with a much improved overall interaction experience. The combination of the paddles behind the steering wheel, a scroll wheel that clicks and tilts, and an intuitive and consistent user interface provide easy and quick interactions with the car. Due to this, we were able to improve user experience but also driver safety. Every single second while driving a car equals hundreds of meters. So by spending less time interacting with a car you can pay more attention to the road.