Week 1 Studio: Orientation — reading your own dashboard

A first pass at classifying one real dashboard element before the course gives you vocabulary for it

22 February 2027

Before the studio#

Find one dashboard you have real access to — your own car, a family member’s, a rental, or a manual/press photo if none of those exist for you. Pick a single element on it: one gauge, one telltale light, one icon, one warning chime you remember. Bring a photo, sketch, or written description. Don’t overthink the choice — an ordinary fuel gauge is as useful here as anything exotic.

In the studio#

In small groups, each person presents their element in under two minutes: what it looks like, what it’s telling the driver, and what channel it’s using to do it. The group then tries to answer, for each: could this have been designed differently — a light instead of a needle, a chime instead of a light — and what would that change about how fast a driver understands it and how much attention it costs them. Idris runs this as a fast round-robin rather than a discussion, so keep your first pass brief; the depth comes from comparing across the group’s different cars.

Afterwards#

Write two or three sentences classifying your element in the terms the group used, and note one thing another student’s example made you notice about your own. Keep this — later weeks build directly on the vocabulary from this first pass.