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Industrial Design Case Study: Experimental Steering Wheels

By ID firm Mixer Design

By Rain Noe - June 7

in Design Business | Cars

Here's an example of the exploratory behind-the-scenes projects that industrial design firms occasionally get. Fiat Chrysler Automobiles (prior to the merger that created Stellantis) hired ID consultancy Mixer Design to do these hi-tech steering wheel design studies.

FCA Steering Wheel Design Study

"The visual relationship of the steering wheel and the instrument panel has always been uneasy. As steering assemblies added more and more features they increased obstruction of the dashboard displays. Mixer was asked to study and reimagine the steering wheel assembly with particular attention to reduce visual occlusion of dashboard displays. This activity employed the expertise of our entire team."

Profiles in Form

"After extensive study of existing and historical configurations, our designers explored a wide range of familiar and unfamiliar ergonomic form-factors. We also broke from the established locations of dashboard displays by experimenting with more visual information moved to the steering wheel assemblies."

Testing Theories

"The best way to learn about our concepts' success was to test them with actual drivers. It would not be safe to do this on the open road, so we engineered some of the more promising designs and installed them into room-sized digital driving simulators."

Reference Designs

"The results were analyzed after testing numerous subjects. The information gleaned from our efforts were ranked and the most successful features were recorded to establish design guidelines for future vehicle developments."

You can see more of Mixer Design's work here.

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Michael DiTullo

5 months ago

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nice design study!

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Alan Nomoto

5 months ago

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Eliminate dash instruments. Move the info to the windshield & side windows with a HUD as well as tactile & auditory cues.

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- Nick T
  
  Alan Nomoto
  
  5 months ago
  
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  I agree. Placing information on the steering wheel & drawing the driver's eyes further away from the road shouldn't be encouraged.
  
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Ryan Cee

5 months ago

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Here's a good design case: if setup this needed to be changed it would have been done differently by now after over a hundred years of car design.

literally trying to reinvent the wheel

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