In September 2020, SBD Automotive carried out its infotainment expert usability evaluation of the Land Rover Defender cockpit in the UK. Launched earlier this year, the Defender fills the gap left by the previous utilitarian model, but is a very different proposition far more in line with the rest of Land Rover’s luxury offering. It’s also the first JLR vehicle to be fitted with new Pivi Pro infotainment system.
The system features a central 10-inch landscape display and a 12.3-inch instrument cluster. The central display is mounted at the front of a concave cubby that runs right across from the passenger side to the cluster. While visually pleasing, it is somewhat low in everyday driving, slightly increasing time with eyes-off-the-road. Beneath the display is a rotary/button panel with controls for HVAC and driving dynamics. First impressions are extremely good. Minute attention has been paid to the graphical interface, resulting in a system with an ultra-premium visual appearance, a contemporary look and feel, multiple micro-interactions, and great use of colour (including slate and copper), imagery, virtual materials such as brushed metal, and attractive stylised iconography. A tessellated triangle motif is used throughout which brings together the foreground and background elements. The information architecture has been simplified: gone are the top status bar and app-laden menu bar running the full width of the screen, instead replaced with a small vertical bar either side. Only three main apps are available from the home screen: navigation, phone and media including radio. An apps screen is accessible from a small link in the corner which offers access to all apps. Even here, the attention to detail can be seen, with the main three apps de-prioritised due to their ease of access elsewhere. This overall approach finds the perfect balance between a system that appears feature-rich and one that is over-simplified. A further benefit of the removal of the upper and lower bars is that the full height of the screen is permanently available. The side bars are translucent, with content visible behind giving the overall impression of a larger screen than 10-inches. Additionally, scrolling and search input have been optimised to overcome the previous system’s problems of little or no visible content while completing an action. The navigation implementation is extremely effective, with a fast and well-optimised POI/destination search that prioritises results intelligently and demonstrates good error correction. Maps are attractive and traffic and road information was all up to date when tested, even for very temporary road closures. Unusually, due to the fact that Android Auto/CarPlay are not able to run full-screen, the native mapping solution is far preferable to smartphone mirroring options, frequently found to be much better than native navigation in other systems. However, not every element of the system sees an improvement. The HVAC implementation is similar to that in the Velar, but as it lacks the touchscreen much of the dynamism is lost, leaving it confusing and fiddly to operate with multiple functions allocated to the rotaries and some control spilling onto the central display. Voice recognition is not good: it’s the one element that appears to have made it across from Touch Pro pretty much unchanged. The system relies on set phrases, has no barge-in, wake word or ability to handle compound or contextual queries, and also appears to lack connectivity. Recognition is poor, and it functions ineffectively to give frequent unintended results or complete failures to complete the task. This is likely to fall well below user expectations and see very little use. Layout and operation of the instrument cluster is mostly well executed with successful distribution of information and a large degree of customisation including full-screen map view. Interaction, however, is hindered by a poorly conceived menu structure which has multiple levels to navigate and a confusing combination of left and up clicks to climb back to the top before it can be closed. Overall, the system feels modern, fast, pleasing to use and consistent with a premium vehicle, giving far more of a smartphone-like experience than any other system tested this year. With fixes to the niggles, all relatively minor, the system would be likely to meet the expectations of the majority of JLR customers. About SBD Automotive's UX evaluations: The Defender UX report is the sixth in a series of 12 infotainment expert user experience evaluations SBD Automotive is carrying out this year. These reports have been produced for several years and provide an expert evaluation of the leading navigation and infotainment systems in the European, US, Chinese and Japanese markets. The series has four main objectives, aimed at supporting clients at various stages of the development cycle: Benchmark and score, Define areas of concern, Outline best practice and Provide tangible recommendations. For these studies, SBD Automotive evaluates the three core components of user experience: functionality, ergonomics and usability, to ensure a fair score can be provided across each system evaluated. The reports rely on a robust methodology that has been developed over the lifetime of the series. It captures over 1,000 data points across 12 different disciplines including static and dynamic testing, system performance, a feature checklist and SUS scoring (see charts) to build a data set that can be consistently benchmarked against all competitor cars, including an overall final percentage system UX score.