by Joe Sokohl
The power of the unaided mind is highly overrated. Without external aids, memory, thought, and reasoning are all constrained. But human intelligence is highly flexible and adaptive, superb at inventing procedures and objects that overcome its own limits. The real powers come from devising external aids that enhance cognitive abilities. How have we increased memory, thought, and reasoning? By the invention of external aids: It is things that make us smart. Don Norman, Things That Make Us Smart © 1993
I have worked for more than 20 years as a user experience (UX) professional. This means I’ve devoted my professional life to the study of what contributes to a great user experience, how to define who users are, what their mental models consist of, and what kinds of interactions encourage them to succeed. All of these make me happy. But the thing that makes me the happiest is spending time riding my motorcycle. For me, it’s the ultimate user experience. Riding my motorcycle lets me experience the world through many senses: the fecund smell of Virginia farmland in June; the rippling heat of the Arkansas Delta region in the middle of a heat wave; the sound of thunderstorm as I race to beat it, heading for shelter from the storm; and the feel of the road, the bike, and the wind as I ride.
Coming home from the national rally in West Virginia, I had an encounter with a granite boulder that made me appreciate the UX of a 2023 Triumph Tiger GT Explorer’s TFT dashboard. Twenty miles south of Seneca Rock on US 33, leaning into a righthander, I briefly noticed a head-sized sphere of granite hanging out where it shouldn’t. I tried to miss it. I didn’t. Immediately, the 2023 Tiger’s TFT changed from a normal display to a screen-filling red tire icon with an exclamation mark in the middle. I briefly hoped that the tire pressure monitoring system (TPMS) had gotten confused by the bump. But the feedback from the wheel said otherwise.
Thanks to the TPMS
No cell service meant I was stuck. A friendly local pulled over and suggested I limp back to an auto shop a mile or so up US 33. Trepidatiously, I monitored the front tire’s status by using the TFT dashboard system. It displayed a graphic of the bike, showing the rear tire at its proper 42 pounds of pressure, and the front tire in red and showing 24 pounds. I gingerly rode back north, closely watching the display to ensure it didn’t precipitously drop below 24 pounds of pressure. The bike’s technology enabled me to react and recover quickly and safely. The physical feedback from the bike itself post-hit didn’t immediately tell me I had a problem. The technology of the TFT, though, did. It allowed me to recognize that I had a problem, without having to use mental powers to understand what the front wheel might be telling me about the situation.
This is why I love the new technologies: TFT, TPMS, ABS, and so on. With their marriage of microprocessors, TFTs, and multiple computers, modern motorcycles enable more rider feedback than the old gauge system. Thus, the opportunity arises for enhanced experiences. Information visualization expert Stephen Few says that dashboards are a “Visual display of the most information needed to achieve one or more objectives which fits entirely on a single computer screen, so it can be monitored at a glance.” A key element in riding is awareness, for with awareness we can reduce risk. That’s why signals and information about status, situation, and progress are so important and need to be readily and easily discernible. Indeed, motorcyclists must perform so many actions and be aware of so many stimuli, they need to be able to think less and act more readily. As Melissa Holbrook Pierson writes, “People tell me I think too much, but I don’t see how such a thing is possible, unless of course it is either in the middle of sex or at the apex of a high-speed turn.”
Are you feeling lucky with the gas tank?
Let’s look at another situation, one that confronts us so often. A rider who sees an alert indicating a low-fuel condition knows they should find a gas station soon—or risk testing just how good a roadside assistance program really is (trust me, most aren’t). Before there were fuel-injected engines, motorcycles used a petcock approach to fuel delivery. A petcock valve has three positions: Off, Run, and Reserve. My first bike, that purple-and-white 1972 Yamaha RD350, had a petcock—which I realized the hard way required the rider to remember to move the lever to Run after filling up. Otherwise, you might find yourself standing next to a suddenly stopped two-stroke bike, blaming some complex problem like fouled plugs. Then Occam’s Razor kicks in and you realize…nope. The bike’s petcock has been on reserve. Your tank is empty. You have to push it across the street to the Sinclair station. So you might miss work at Mister Weed’s Soda Shop on Grace Street that day.
Motorcycle fuel gauges are a recent motorcycle development, though cars have had them since 1922. So technology isn’t the problem per se; it’s the amount of attention the bike requires from us riders.
In human factors terms, this attention is that area of just-noticeable difference, or JND, where there’s just enough of a difference one object has from those around it to cause our minds to notice that something needs our attention. In the case of the catastrophic failure of the tire, the Triumph didn’t focus on subtlety. Instead, it shouted that the tire was wonked up. Having this sort of feedback enhances our ride. The things that designers incorporate into a motorcycle can make us smart, because it’s easier to recognize something
than it is for us to look at it and have to recall what it’s supposed to be, or to calculate meaning from that object.
So I appreciate the enhancement a well-designed motorcycle dashboard offers my biking experience. It’s not that the technology means I don’t have to think: It means I don’t have to think about non-essential things while I’m in that righthander coming around a curve on US 33.
I still have to miss the rock.
(Editor’s note: Originally published in the November-December 2023 On The Level).