Without the fingerprints, this car would look clean.
The reason for this is that the human eye can detect contrast much better then it can detect absolute color shades. Look at the image below. If you cover the background with two pieces of paper, you will see that the middle bar is the same color from left to right. The human eye perceives a change only in reference to other colors.
The eye can recognize contrast better than absolute colors.
When people touch a slightly dirty car, they scrape off some off the dust and create a contrast. This happens to most cars where the back door lifts up. Most people grab the bottom edge of the door when it is above their head leaving fingerprints. To minimize the impact of this problem, car manufactures should add a design element like raised trim in a darker color to the bottom edge of the door. When you reach up to close the door, you would only touch the trim piece instead of the solid color door. This would prevent fingerprints wiping away some of the dirt and showing that the car is dirty. Of course, the trim piece would be designed to match the overall style.
A black trim piece that people would touch when they close the door.
By adding this simple design element, a light color car will not have fingerprints on the back door when the car is dirty. This will make the car look cleaner even when there is a slight layer of dust. A clean looking car does not have to be washed as often thus saving people time. Therefore, a small change to the design of the car will prevent busy people from having to spend their Saturdays waiting in line at the car wash.
2 comments:
Great ideas! "No Touch" open and close trunk designs are another way to solve this issue. Many high-end cars are beginning to provide the click to open, click to close trunk designs. This also helps the car owner/user when loading-in things like grocery items that require two hands to carry and place in the trunk. This is “No Touch’ or “Masked Touch” idea can and should be utilized when designing "high-touch" products and areas like refrigerators, glass doors/windows, children's rooms, etc.
One of the ideals of LatentValue is that the change should not add significant cost to the product or service. By creating an electronic door opener, you add to the cost of the car. When the trim piece is designed into the car from the beginning, it should have very little impact to the cost of the car.
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