Simplicity Behind The Dashboard

If you've driven the highways between Southern Maine and Newburyport MA, you've seen me. I was the guy driving the pimped out '96 GEO Prizm.

This luxury sedan featured such fine amenities as:

• 4 wheels
• 2 hub caps
• 1 headlight
• 1/2 of a front bumper
• Restrictor plates (aka horrid shaking) to keep me under 65mph

Kelly Blue Book valued my car at $124, but I found a dealer that would give me $200 as a trade in. I've never passed up 76 free American dollars, and I'm certainly not going to start now. All I needed to do was find a suitable replacement vehicle.

My search narrowed down to two cars, and ultimately the one with the simplest interface ended up in my driveway.

The Contenders

I test drove a 2002 Saab 95 Aero and a 2002 VW Jetta GLX Wagon. Both cars had similar features. The higher-end Saab had a few more miles on it, making its price comparable to the VW.

Both cars were manual transmission.

Bad first impression: the key is not inserted into the steering column. Instead it goes into the center console. Why? What if Home Depot suddenly started selling front doors with the key hole in the upper left corner? There are well established rules for key placement that I'm not willing to give up.

Having never driven a Saab before, it took me about 5 minutes to figure out that, to put the transmission in reverse, I needed to slide a little piece of plastic on the shifter up.

Once in reverse, the car started beeping and the dash LED console displayed "Parking Assistant". I'm not sure how the beeping assisted my parking, but it did break up the silence as I travelled in reverse.

Next, I pull out on the street and accelerate. Suddenly, the car beeps again, and a little light on the dashboard tells me to "SHIFT UP". Thanks Saab, but if I wanted someone to tell me when to shift, I'd buy an automatic transmission or drive around with my dad.

I sit in car, and put the key in it's expected spot

Reverse is as easy as moving the stick shift to the area designated with an "R"

I can accelerate and rev the engine until the transmission drops out without the car complaining

Thanks Volkswagen, I'll take it.

VW's engineers obviously abide by rules 10 and 11 of the Unix Philosophy

• In interface design, always do the least surprising thing.
• When a program has nothing surprising to say, it should say nothing.