In this thread, we tell Ford how to make the Home Screen perfect

[Nerwyn]

I’m not sure if this has been mentioned, but take that functionally useless picture of the car that’s in the controls screen, change it to a driver side profile of the car and make tap zones for the frunk, charge port, and trunk. Instead of the tiny buttons shoved up in the corner as far away from the driver as possible.

The product owner or UI designer at Ford who thinks the giant functionally useless picture of the car in the UI and Ford Pass app was a good idea needs to get their head out of their ass.

 

[Gullwingdmc]

The product owner or UI designer at Ford who thinks the giant functionally useless picture of the car in the UI and Ford Pass app was a good idea needs to get their head out of their ass.

The frustrating thing about the FordPass picture is the car used to be bigger, then the app updated at some point and the car picture got smaller, but the amount of space it took up didn’t.

 

[azerik]

An example of a better layout for the frunk, charge port, and trunk buttons

Button on the car, on the area. Except the dc disconnect button. I’d be happy with that. It wasn’t bad before, even with the ‘ghost car’ outline of the MME

 

[Mirak]

Button on the car, on the area. Except the dc disconnect button. I’d be happy with that. It wasn’t bad before, even with the ‘ghost car’ outline of the MME

You should never have to tap into Settings to open the trunk. Needs to be on Home Screen. Simple as that.

 

[azerik]

While that's actually true, filling up the ribbon on top with the frunk button you can bounce into when trying to get back to car play, isn't a good idea.. Perhaps "Hold to open" button. But that requires a popup or previous training. Otherwsie people just think it's broken

 

[Mirak]

While that's actually true, filling up the ribbon on top with the frunk button you can bounce into when trying to get back to car play, isn't a good idea.. Perhaps "Hold to open" button. But that requires a popup or previous training. Otherwsie people just think it's broken

Just like camera or other buttons, it is grayed out when not available for use. In this case, in park.

 

[Deleted member 16048]

While that's actually true, filling up the ribbon on top with the frunk button you can bounce into when trying to get back to car play, isn't a good idea.. Perhaps "Hold to open" button. But that requires a popup or previous training. Otherwsie people just think it's broken

Just like camera or other buttons, it is grayed out when not available for use. In this case, in park.

I agree with both here, you can have them only appear under conditions, then also the press and hold is a great feature too. You wouldn't need a popup for that with the correct UI design of the button itself. a loading ring around the button that needs to complete before the command sends would work as an intuitive way to show how it works.

I am curious to hear what the next update will be after 4.1.3 I'm sure we are getting close to something here. (We hope.)

 

[Gullwingdmc]

You should never have to tap into Settings to open the trunk. Needs to be on Home Screen. Simple as that.

No Thank You. I agree it shouldn’t be in “settings” but please don’t put all those buttons on the Home Screen.

 

[Mirak]

No Thank You. I agree it shouldn’t be in “settings” but please don’t put all those buttons on the Home Screen.

Not asking for all, just trunk. Please remember, this is such a common function that it is almost always a physical button. I have never driven a car without a physical button. Ford ditched it, gave us two buttons for max defrost instead, and put the trunk access in settings. Good Lord.

 

[snowfreak]

I think we can all agree that the UI overhaul with 4.1.2 made some significant enhancements… and whiffed on some softballs.

In this thread, we’re gonna make a master list of things Ford should do to make the UI Home Screen perfect. Yes, perfect, because our cars deserve the best.

I will start, and I will edit this top post with additions I find worthy. And if I don’t agree, well, your contribution is still documented. We can't all agree on everything.

And keep in mind, this thread is limited to perfecting the Home Screen. We already have another poll for all the other software enhancements we want. https://www.macheforum.com/site/thr...ware-enhancements-do-you-want-the-most.23537/

Ok, so here’s a picture of the Home Screen, labeled with some areas I’m gonna address one by one…

1. The Top Ribbon.

Ok, we got a few problems here. First the “home,” “settings,” and “camera” buttons are FUGLY. The color, the clip-artiness. Just so, so, so… so so so so BAD. Settings should be a gear symbol. The app tray should be a typical grid of pretty squares, or even bring our car icon back. But why is the app tray now... a clip art house?!

@Tim_C mocked up these suggested icons. They certainly look better than what Ford provided.

Next, you've got a CarPlay icon in the top ribbon, but also a CarPlay tile in the #2 tile strip. Why both? And why do they operate differently? The CarPlay icon in the top ribbon takes you to what you were last using, whereas the CarPlay tile... doesn't. Weird. This needs to get sorted out.

Finally, where is the button to open my trunk?! Ford, you may have forgotten this and I realize it isn’t an issue with your favorite child - the Lightning - but YOU FORGOT TO GIVE US A DEDICATED PHYSICAL BUTTON TO OPEN THE TRUNK. And for some of us who have kids, or make pickups or deliveries, or lots of other uses, this is a serious pain in the ass. There is absolutely no reason we should have to remember to tap into Settings - how is opening my trunk a setting?! - and then locate the trunk button hidden in the top right corner of that pretty and totally pointless car picture.

Now, look, I know there are a few other things - like frunk access - that folks would also like to be in this top ribbon, but here’s an easy solution - let us pick what we want up here! Obviously the icons for apps and settings, and then let us select 3-4 other icons for things like cams, trunk, frunk, etc. I’m not saying the list should be endless, but give us a short list of stuff we can pin to this top ribbon!

2. The Tile Strip

Nothing has caused more heated (and kind of hilarious) recent debate than Ford’s elimination of the big tiles. I personally don’t care. But I know others do. And while I don’t think it’s really necessary to reintroduce the complexity of toggling between two different sizes, Ford could give us a bit more detail on the smaller tiles. There’s room there. It looks like a tile can fit three lines of text.

Stuff like current artist/song on the media tiles. For Tire Pressure, it would be something like...


@cmtaylor963 has some interesting ideas below for a much more dramatic overhaul, including replacing the tile strip altogether with a ribbon if icons, similar to desktop systems. https://www.macheforum.com/site/thr...ake-the-home-screen-perfect.25814/post-596770

3. This Empty Space in the Climate Controls

This one is a minor nit, but it has always seemed to me that there is some wasted space here. Whereas to the left of the knob there are two different icons, to the right of the knob there is only one. I’m not saying we should clutter up every square centimeter of screen - clean is good - and I'm not saying we should tuck an icon close to the knob (fat fingers) - but it seems like there is room here for maybe one more icon if you shift the current icon a bit higher or lower. The most frequently requested other home screen function seems to be circulation mode.

4. Downsizing the Bottom Ribbon

You guys remember that Matt Damon movie Downsizing where they shrink everybody down to 5 centimeters and it seems like a really cool concept and then halfway through the movie you realized that there wasn’t an actual… plot? Yeah, that was disappointing. Also disappointing - why did Ford shrink all these buttons? They didn’t add any buttons here - just made them smaller and harder to tap. Why? Some of us don’t have surgeon-steady hands. Tiny buttons are hard to tap while driving. Bring them back to their original size.

Also, once the max defrost is activated, why does tapping it again not turn it off? This also applies to the physical max defrost button. Instead of turning it off, tapping after activation changes the climate to Auto - Medium and leaves the rear window defroster on. Huh? If we tap the max defrost button a second time, it should turn OFF. Just like the heated steering wheel.

Ok - I look forward to your additions.

And paging @Ford Motor Company - please make sure the necessary people are keeping an eye on this thread.

And bring back the heated seat "auto" setting that ALSO showed you what level it "auto" set for you. It used to show the 1,2,3 all the time, and setting auto just added a little "A" on it, so when you got in with the auto on, you knew how warm your butt would be in a few minutes. As it is, if I leave it on auto, it just shows a little orange light. I can't stand the suspense and end up just tapping that to turn it to the setting I wanted anyhow.

Also, with heated seats - maybe turn off the passenger one if there's no one detected there.

 

[notaek]

They fixed the Home icon on the 23 Escape

 

[Mirak]

They fixed the Home icon on the 23 Escape

It's still weird to press a home icon to open an app tray. Isn't it? Am I the only person who finds that non-intuitive? You press the home button to get to the home screen. The app tray isn't the home screen, is it?

 

[Reign of Ravens]

I would not buy anymore the car with no physical control buttons. I hope not all manufacturers will follow this NO-buttons trend.

Voice commands are theoretically safer than physical buttons, and if you can get them working well, would mean that a large screen has more utility than a bunch of buttons that are sitting unused. I've only tried the voice commands once, tried to adjust a climate control setting and it switched me out of CarPlay and turned on the radio instead. I need to review the list of commands and then try it again, but for now I have turned it off. And granted, certain settings will never be put behind voice commands, I'm guessing (like changing the drive style, or enabling/disabling one-pedal driving). But voice commands are probably the way of the future.

I like the proposed ones, for the most part. I would make change.
The color of the icons changes with your drive mode (Whisper, Engage, Unbridled).

I drive in Unbridled because I like the layout of the instrument cluster, and I prefer aggressive regenerative braking. I turned off the setting to have ambient lighting change with the drive style, because I like calming blues over aggressive reds/oranges. If they were to change the colors with the drive style, I'd have optional and linked to that setting with ambient lighting.

There needs to be a more direct way to get info from Ford and provide feedback on things that need to be improved.

If you do a bit of diving into settings, there's an option to make a voice recording on feedback that is then sent to Ford. (With apologies, I can't remember where it is, exactly.) The recording is limited to 45 seconds and I suppose there's no way to know if it has been reviewed, or if anything will be done about it. But it's a nice feature that they added to allow us to give feedback. Consider sending off some thoughts the next time you pull up to a long red light

I like a lot of the suggestions in this thread. What I like most of all is customizability. Let us put frequently used things front and center. I enable one-pedal driving for stop and go traffic and disable it later, and would love to have a switch or button for it. If Ford could optimize their software, or if they had gone with a more powerful processor so that opening the menu didn't take 1-2 seconds, then getting into the menu to adjust this wouldn't seem like such a big deal.

 

[sci_goat]

My attempt at improved top-bar icons.

• Simple, high-contrast color choices
• Familiar, largely standardized icons

Edited to add a version with a hatch control icon. Maybe it would only appear when parked.

To iterate further on your suggestion for the trunk: Have this be a combination trunk/frunk button, that you press, then it prompts whether you want to open front or rear trunk.

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