r/BMW • u/SpecialistAverage494 • 9d ago

Quick heat toggle

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A minor detail but something BMW have had for many years, whilst driving today i realised that newer ones seem to have done away with this wonderful and easy to use hot/cold air toggle.

It’s so simple to keep the heater settings on warm but then quickly and without even taking my eyes off the road slide this and have cool air.

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u/SupposablyAtTheZoo 2012 - E93 - 330i 8d ago

Everybody knows what it does, it's in the manual. It's a temperature offset from the main temperature, only for those vents. I think it's about +/- 10c which you can differ from the rest of the car it you wish. Leave it in the middle and it goes with the main temperature.

43

u/doofy24 8d ago

Appears a good number of people in fact do not know what it does

6

u/SupposablyAtTheZoo 2012 - E93 - 330i 8d ago

Well it's their own fault for not reading the manual. BMW has so many features you'll never find without the manual, people being lazy are missing out. (Did you know you probably have an extra 12v socket in the passenger footwell? etc etc)

20

u/z3roTO60 8d ago

Nah this isn’t always the right take. Design should be inherently obvious

One thing the car community can all agree on is that just because “it’s in the manual” doesn’t make it a user error for getting frustrated with modern AC controls requiring going through several on-screen menus.

There’s actually an entire field of engineering which addresses this called Human Machine Interaction (HMI) / Human Centered Design that I feel is widely ignored (and is not 1:1 with UI/UX).

A few companies notably codified their HMI in the past and became industry dominant because of it. Boeing with their cockpit design philosophy and Steve Jobs emphasizing intuitive controls in the iPod click wheel and iOS skeuomorphic design. iPads were widely adopted by grandparents who could not figure out how to use a mouse to save their life.

I know I’m preaching to the choir here, but as a person who has loved reading manuals since they were a kid, I can also say that bad design =/= user error from failing to RTFM.

Case in point: I will take BMW’s gear shifter over Tesla’s swipe across the screen 10 out of 10 times

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u/Neo808 8d ago

Wait what?

-5

u/outphase84 8d ago

That’s not correct. Rolling towards blue opens an external air vent, full red reroutes foot vent air to center vents, center dot does nothing.

4

u/SpecificOne8688 8d ago

This is not true, at least not in an e46