As OEMs continue to pursue the SDV, they are increasing both the number of technologies in the vehicle and their importance to the overall user experience. However, the success of these technologies relies on their ability to contribute to a seamless and satisfactory user experience. For OEMs, developers, and suppliers, delivering this experience ensures successful product launches, while securing long-term customer loyalty with the vehicle and its ecosystem of digital services.
Recognizing how these HMI features can positively, or negatively, contribute to the in-vehicle user experience is our In-Car HMI UX Evaluation & Benchmarking report series. Representing one of our best-selling, longest running, reports, it provides a comprehensive, analytical, assessment of the latest HMI systems launched globally. Across 2024, our UX experts will review and benchmark the systems provided in six recently released vehicles to understand who is leading in the space, and who is falling behind.
Following our article on the Xiaomi SU7 HMI UX report, this Insight covers the latest entry in the series, which takes a deep dive into the 2024 Lincoln Nautilus. While sharing its IVI and UX highlights, we will also be outlining the strengths and weaknesses posed by some of the car’s most interesting technologies and more deeply analyzing their implications on the end user experience.
A Closer Look at the Lincoln Nautilus
The user experience of the 2024 Nautilus is driven by the Lincoln Digital Experience, an all-new infotainment system from the Ford Motor Company. Built on Google’s Android Automotive OS, it pairs an 11.1-inch central touchscreen with a 48-inch 4K panoramic display that stretches across the width of the dashboard. Its personalization capabilities allow the user to customize the apps and content shown on these screens. Internally, the Lincoln Digital Experience offers five times faster main processing, 14 times faster graphics processing (through its adoption of Epic’s Unreal Engine), four times the memory and eight times the storage provided by its predecessor.
Through its adoption of Android Automotive OS, the new system provides native, automotive-focused, versions of known Google applications – including Google Maps, Google Assistant, and the Google Play store. Further entertainment apps are unlocked when the vehicle is parked, including those for video streaming (such as Prime Video and YouTube) and in-vehicle gaming. For productivity, the Lincoln Digital Experience offers an available Vivaldi Browser app at launch, with Google Chrome set to arrive at a later date. Also available are a variety of video conferencing apps that allow users to join meetings exclusively through audio-access while driving, with a video feed of the meeting’s participants revealed on the touchscreen when parked.
Key Takeaways
One of the key UX strengths of the 2024 Nautilus was found in the consistency offered in both the Lincoln Digital Experience and the cabin more broadly.
Our UX experts noted that when comparing the consistency between each of the displays in similar systems (e.g., the instrument cluster to the central screen), there are often key visual differences between them for the same feature. This was not the case for the Lincoln Nautilus, however, which offers a more streamlined UI between its panoramic and central displays. Our team found that most features were generally consistent in look and feel across both displays, particularly the radio, media, and navigation features which were all presented in a similar manner. Even third-party solutions like Apple CarPlay and Android Auto were similarly well-considered and integrated across the Lincoln Digital Experience. Beyond the displays, our team also praised the way in which this focus on consistency extended to the cabin more broadly – shown most prominently in its choice of materials and build quality. Here, they highlighted the need for OEMs to deliver this consistency across their core features to boost the appeal of their vehicles and ensure a positive user experience which, in turn, can elevate the perceived quality of the vehicle itself.
While our experts enjoyed the consistency present throughout the interior of the new Nautilus, they found the customizability of its displays to be lacking against similar vehicles in the premium segment. While the passenger side of the display allows for some customization, the team found these options to be limited – with no choice available for different layouts or the screens shown on either the central display or the driver side of the panoramic display; and no ability for users to adjust the selection of widgets on neither the home screen, or the apps on the shortcuts bar on the driver side of the central display. For the latter, our experts felt that the inclusion of a shortcut to the panoramic display settings represented a weakness in the system. Since owners typically configure their own settings upon receiving the vehicle, and proceed to leave them untouched, this shortcut does not add the most value to the overall user experience as much as a user-selected shortcut to a more commonly used feature would.
Analysis
A deeper analysis of the Lincoln Digital Experience by our experts unearthed similar strengths and weaknesses. One of the key strengths found through this analysis was its offering of a holistic system that supports the driver in a number of ways. The panoramic display, which spans the width of the dashboard and sits above the steering wheel, is positioned within the driver’s line of sight. While minimizing the distance that the driver has to look away from the road to get information from this display, this also means that they will not need to rely as heavily on the central display to find this same information. Since the panoramic display can also host a variety of in-vehicle apps, such as navigation which itself provides a large map interface on this display, users are able to focus more closely on the road – altogether lowering levels of driver distraction.
However, while enjoying the holistic nature of the system, our experts experienced several stability issues throughout the testing period that, while minor (not critical to safety or functionality), had a negative impact on the overall user experience. The team found that the Google Assistant was a key contributor to this weakness. Here, the assistant would not correctly respond to prompts, attempt to respond to prompts but crash or not complete tasks in the process, and not take other command inputs into account when processing requests.
Next Steps
As shown in this article, the 2024 Nautilus provides a holistic, well thought out, user experience through the Lincoln Digital Experience. Within their testing and analysis of this new system, our experts found the cohesion offered across the system’s displays enhanced usability while enabling a safer, more seamless, user experience. Although, at the same time, they found the customizability of these displays was limited in comparison to similar solutions in the premium segment, while stability issues encountered throughout the testing period posed weaknesses that, if not resolved in future updates, could be a detriment to the user experience. The insights shared throughout this article, however, represent only a portion of the knowledge shared in the full Lincoln Nautilus HMI UX Evaluation & Benchmarking report.
Spanning more than 150 pages, it provides even deeper insights into the user experience of the new model’s features across several key domains, including ADAS, infotainment, navigation, and voice recognition. While scoring these features and functions against our proven evaluation methodologies, the report also benchmarks the new Nautilus against the vehicles reviewed in our 2023 HMI UX reports, and those reviewed in our 2024 HMI UX reports to date.
Want to learn more about the latest in-vehicle HMI solutions, their impacts on the end user experience, and which vehicle offers the best user experience? Then be sure to secure your copy of our In-Car HMI UX Evaluation & Benchmarking series!
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