The cup-holder quotient

Cars are a fascinating platform for user experience design.  From the aesthetic and reflective value of a flashy or quirky car to the behavioral considerations of the interior design (can you tell I'm a Don Norman follower?), there are so many factors to the design of an automobile and so many ways in which a car interfaces with its owner's life that the challenges faced-- and often the solutions created-- can be quite intriguing.

Also, they can be quite shiny.

I've read plenty of material on the various human factors of cars and their design.  Also, I've been in a car or two in my day, and I've come up with a theory quantifying how carefully car manufacturers design for the user.

I call it the "cup-holder quotient."  Big surprise, I know.  I read the title of this post too.  The cup-holder quotient is a simple metric for determining how much of the design process was concerned with the experience of the users of the car, both driver and passengers.  It goes like this:

D = C/S
 

That's it.  Here's the secret decoder key:

    D = Design rating

    C = Number of cup-holders

    S = Number of persons comfortably seated by the vehicle (including driver) 

When you run the math, you come up with a number that represents the amount of consideration paid to the user experience.  Don't cheat doing the math; you can't stick someone in the trunk, and putting a passenger where they'll get a stick shift in the tender bits is also not kosher.  They'll only hurt your score anyway.  As for figuring C, pretty much any round space that'll hold a cup counts, though I'd argue that some cars try to pass off a little circular divot as a cup-holder when it really just invites disaster.

Once you've worked it out, check your score.  A D-value of 1 is a standard, average sort of ride.  This occurs when the automaker has ensured that everyone has a place for their drink.  A D-value greater than 1 shows considerable attention paid to the needs of those in the vehicle.  This is a designer doing her job.  A D-value below 1, however, is a sad thing to see.  It's when the designer is ignorant of the user's plight, or in some cases is possibly just a sadist.

When a car has more cup-holders than seats, the designers clearly want to make sure that no one wants for drink space.  The reasons for having a D-value greater than 1 can be quite broad.  Off the top of my head, I could imagine several reasons for a D>1 score: accommodating left- and right-handed people; ensuring that people have a comfortable place to keep their drink regardless of posture, preference, or physiology; providing different-size accommodations for different types of cups; or even allowing for a large number of drinks or other cup-sized objects to be conveyed securely.  The designers that consider these factors are designers with the users' interests in mind.

I drive a Chevrolet Colorado-- a pickup truck.  It has an extended cab with two rather feeble fold-down jump seats in the extension, which I'll call half a seat each-- one adult laid across them, two children, or maybe a couple of midgets.  This gives me S=3.  My truck has SIX cup-holders.  My D-value of 2.0 is quite the source of pride, because for a pickup truck owner, I'm very happy with the design considerations made in my vehicle.  It's not just about places to put my drink, though the cup-holders are plentiful and varied (for different-sized drinks, which is lovely).  It also has well thought-out instrumentation, a good control layout, and even nice little touches like the wipers automatically restarting their cycle anytime you increase the wiper speed.  Even the driving experience has been tuned to be slightly more fun than the average truck, with a short-throw shifter and a tighter steering wheel.  I consider my truck's design to be very considerate of me as a user.

On the other end of the spectrum (and yet made by the same company) is the Chevy Uplander.  I had the misfortune of riding in one of these atrocities a couple of years ago, and it was a significant part of my devising this theory.  I believe the cup-holder quotient for this medieval grotesquerie of a minivan was about 0.3 (I'm estimating 2/7, or 0.29, to be more precise).  I rode in one of the captain's chairs in the middle row, and halfway into the first turn, realized that my chair had no armrests as I tumbled into the aisle until the seat belt halted my fall with a snap.  The ride thereafter continued to be unpleasant, though I fortunately managed not to come out of the ordeal with PTSD, so at least there's that.  It was easily the worst example of vehicle UX I've ever experienced.

 In their defense, they added armrests in the next year's model.

It's maybe a bit of a silly whim of mine to measure vehicles this way, but talking about it with friends and co-workers has gotten people to think about user experiences and how much consideration has to be made at an early stage to really cater to the end user and all their many possible needs and circumstances.  It's always fun to engage people in discussions about UX, because everyone has a story or an opinion and everyone's opinion is valuable.  Plus, my truck scores well, so I can brag about it, and who doesn't like that?