For the last several months the driver-side power window in my car has been sluggish going up and down. So, yesterday I spent 4 hours replacing two plastic guide bushings hidden in the innards of the door. The bushings are really simple tiny things, and cost about 50c each, but in order to put them where they are supposed to be one has to remove several layers of door material. After struggling through the process I realized that there is a whole unexplored area of usability research just waiting to be investigated: mechanic car interaction.

Researchers have spent a huge amount of time studying how people actually drive cars. We have a very deep understanding of how to design cars from this perspective. But I have never heard of any research centered around the maintenance of cars. I think this is a very interesting problem. On one hand I want car maintenance to be so trivial that fixing any problem is like building a simple LEGO model. Everything goes where it seems it should, and clicks nicely into place. However there are a bunch of competing requirements. The car must remain affordable to build. It must be light enough to have reasonable gas mileage. It must be safe. So, can we design a car that can be maintained by anybody but maintains these properties?

I think the answer is yes. Taking my door as an example, the entire thing contains maybe 50 parts. That is not a high degree of complexity. Once the thing is apart it is not terribly difficult to figure out what does what. The difficulty lies mostly in actually getting it apart. The fasteners used are generally not friendly. To get the first body panel off one must tug at it, fearing the whole thing is going to tear apart, until the fastener finally lets go and pops out of its hole. Then there is a layer of vapor barrier glued on with the grossest sticky black stuff. Then there is the air bag that has to be treated gingerly, lest it blow up in your face. There are bolts that fit into little tabs that tend to break. Finally, during reassembly, there is waterproofing trim that is a freaking nightmare until one figures out that it needs to removed and fit on the floor panel, rather than trying to stick the door panel onto it while it sits on the door frame. All very confusing.

In short, I think a huge difference in maintainability could be made by improving fastener technology, and the way in which parts fit together. Taking the door panels off should be a pleasure. I should be able to lift a lever and have the things slide right off. The camera makers have figured this out. Sometimes I take the lens off my SLR and then put it right back on, just because it feels so nice. Why can’t cars be the same?

Looking beyond door maintenance to more standard car stuff, why do I have to stick my fingers into a dark and dirty hidden place and pull on a sharpish lever in order to raise the hood? I read somewhere that some non-insignificant fraction of drivers never lift their hood. I suspect they would be more likely to if lifting it was much easier. Also, when adding oil why do I have to open this bottle and then pour it into this smallish hole, potentially spilling it all over either the engine or myself? Oil is very unpleasant stuff. There should be a method for adding oil where the oil itself is never arcing through empty air, potentially making a mess.

A while ago I read about a team of average women who were recruited by a car maker to design a “woman’s car,” whatever that is. One of their answers was to make the hood impossible to open, except by a licensed mechanic. I think this is an example of the mistake of letting users design something. They designed what they thought they wanted, not what they actually wanted. And since they didn’t like opening the hood, their answer was to never do it. What they actually want, and what I want, and what I think everybody wants, is a car that lets me change pretty much any mechanical part (maybe stopping short of the powertrain itself), without getting dirty, pinching my fingers, or worrying about breaking anything. Maybe the women from the story won’t go so far as to do the maintenance I did this weekend, but maybe they will be able to open the hood and put some oil in. The point is that the difficulty level of every aspect of car maintenance, from adding oil to changing a bushing, can be made simpler.

As for my adventure with the window, it now opens and closes like it did when it was new. And I only stripped one bolt, and ended up with one mystery washer.