• Maps have traditionally reflected the political motivations of their makers. Digital mapping gives users more control through personalisation and adapting to social context.
• Introducing digital systems for navigation and vehicle management is the most significant change for the automotive industry since lean manufacturing.
• Personalisation can establish sufficient trust for users to consider self-driving cars.
• Maps require hundreds of information assets to describe the environment in a usable way. For instance, HERE's fleet of cars gathers 300+ data points, including 3D point clouds of the physical environment.
• The growth in map assets is making it easier to infer new categories of information from existing data points. For instance, when vehicles cease visiting a specific location, it might be reasonable to assume a business has closed.
• Perception of where data 'lives' is shifting from physical devices to virtual space, representing a layer of information overlaying the physical world.
• Dissatisfaction with in-dash mapping and a lack of connectivity is causing people to retrofit vehicles with mobile devices. The result is unsafe behaviour and disruption to the in-car brand experience. For instance, in-car environments planned for luxury and safety become filled with wires and unsightly cradles. The automotive industry is eager to regain control of this experience.
• A user entering text on a mobile device is 23 times more likely to crash. A user looking at a paper map is 7 times more likely to crash. Both represent dangerous situations, but why does visual engagement with paper result in a lower crash risk?
• Users form emotional attachments with their vehicles, as evidenced by the tendency to name cars. However, emotional attachment to vehicle technology is weak. Indeed, vehicle technology is the antithesis of the idiosyncrasies which give vehicles their character. Technology which adapts to the user's personality is more likely to establish an emotional bond, thereby improving ease of use. For instance, the personalised nature of smartphones tends to foster these bonds, with 80 percent of American teenagers keep their phone in their bed while they sleep. Cars could emulate this by introducing, for instance, braking systems which analyse the way a user corners and adapt to reflect their driving style.
• "Ultimately, we will fall in love with our in-car system."
• Technology should seek to extend human characteristics rather than introducing wholly new forms of artificial engagement that feel artificial. For instance, users want to interact with maps which reflect their own concept of place, not with the geocoded content understood by most digital systems.
• Removing features has more influence on user experience than adding features. Digital maps could benefit from simplification to better reflect context.
• Prioritise beautiful essentials - the mundane interactions performed many times a day - over rarely used, headline features.
• Dopamine, the hormone associated with joy, is a powerful force stimulated by good interaction design. For instance, the physics, animation and sound effects of Angry Birds.
• Consider the cardinality of data linked to specific services: Google's data are structured to answer 'What?", Facebook 'Who?' and HERE 'Where?'.
• "Location disrupts industries"
• Create fluidity between users' multiple digital touchpoints so map data flow from device to device. For instance, cars could detect potholes automatically using motion sensors and share this info in real time.
• Good design moves organisations from the red ocean of competitive tit-for-tat to the blue ocean of redefining the competitive landscape (as described by W. Chan Kim and Renee Mauborgne). For instance, an analogy may be found in the composer Max Richter's evolution of Vivaldi's Four Seasons, where he changed about 25 percent of the notes, to dramatically alter the outcome. See also 'Competing for the future' (C K Prahalad and Gary Hamel).
• "Love, design, location"
• It's not about connecting smartphones to cars, it's about fundamentally transforming driving.