Douglas Gastich
I like German cars. I appreciate the fit and finish. I enjoy the performance. The solid engineering that you can FEEL in a corner. The effortless speed and the way they make light work of long miles.
I DON’T like the expense, depreciation or maintenance costs of German cars. Which is why I don’t currently have one. That, and teenage drivers pushing our family toward more ‘sensible’ American made options. But I remember my time in each I’ve owned.
A recent chat with the team about a complicated app feature reminded me of a key difference between two of my past German saloons: The BMW 5 series (a 2010 545 E60) and the Audi A4 (2018 B9).
These are very different cars both in era and design philosophy, but they wind up in a similar place on the ‘power/luxury/fun’ scale. They both have a cool, useful feature more and more common these days: cornering lights. These help light up the inside of a corner. But how they get to the feature could not be more different.
Cornering lights are nifty. You get to see the dark inside of a corner, which in a tight turn is where you are headed. In the BMW, when a turn is sensed a set of servos- little motors in the light- move the lens to focus on the inside of the turn. Its a cool effect as light sweeps across the darkness, and it does the job.
The Audi also lights up the corner, though with less fanfare. When you start to turn, a small, bright, second lightbulb on the edge of the headlight turns on, instantly illuminating the curve. No fancy moving lens. No sweep of light across the bonnet. No fuss.
In fact, the Audi’s second light is brighter, faster, and doesn’t have the downside of LOSING light on what is directly in front of the car (sure, you are turning, but, as I learned, you still may want to see what is passing as you turn). Sometimes simpler is better.
So what can we learn?
Well, it depends on the “Job to Be Done”. Are we trying to impress a buyer with trinkets and baubles? BMW wins every time. Or, are we trying to effectively light a corner with minimal fuss? Audi beats the field with a practical solution.
What is the equivalent of the ‘cornering lights’ in your app or digital system? That fancy feature you’ve cooked up, what is it REALLY trying to solve? Could your current approach be simpler?