Ford Brings You the Future of Dashboards Gauges in Cars

We love dashboards. Heck, we love 'em so much, we created our own to monitor all our online affairs here at ZURB.com. **Dashboards provide huge value to businesses and users alike**, encouraging activity, serving as a jumping off point with primary calls to action, and getting users excited about the service. They're pretty slick. One of our favorite ways to use a dashboard here at ZURB is to encourage users to be *more* active through visually informative designs, a technique really taking hold on the Web. Getting people to do more isn't as hard as it might seem. Give your users the tools they need and a little boost of confidence, and things will magically start to happen. Using better dashboards on the Web is so effective that it has even spilled over into automotive design. **People want visually engaging, game-like views on the data in their lives.** Ford and Smart Design have acknowledged that fact and have begun prototyping a brand new car dashboard. The trick, they said, was not making the infographics too complex and keeping the dashboard from distracting drivers. The initial design is quite promising compared to your typical set of dashboard gauges in a car. This early progress into more effective and usable interior design for cars is quite interesting. Just think how mundane and ineffective information is shown to you in your car. Don't you ever wish it was more obvious that your car was overheating, that you needed gas, or that your battery was nearly depleted? Improving on existing dashboards in cars make sense for a number of reasons: 1. By essentially making a game out of fuel consumption, they increase the likeness factor of their products, while encouraging drivers to be a little nicer on the environment. 2. Having a visually engaging dashboard means people are happy to look at it and are much more likely to engage. 3. With a dynamic visual approach—a dashboard that changes visually depending on certain conditions—it also makes for a more usable piece of technology. Visual feedback through a dashboard is something I've long been wanting in my own car. **With all those typical dials and gauges, nothing stands out** except for the occasional blinker or check engine light (mostly due to the sound they make). Car makers can improve upon typical car experiences with this kind of improved dashboard. I am *definitely* looking forward to seeing more of these kinds of interactions making it into cars and other consumer products. Improved reactions, easier to understand data visualization, and richer and more fun experiences are taking hold in more and more places. That's what I call progress!