Scoop: 2007 MINI Dash Options

. Reverse should NOT be next to first gear, IMHO — that’s a safety defect in the current model. “Right and down” is the best place for it. And there should be a prominent indicator light (probably yellow, a distinctive color) that illuminates when the car is in reverse. A yellow R would be ideal.

Completely disagree with you there. If there’s one place it should not be, it’s next to the gear that you’d be in going the fastest – 6th. Every BMW since the dawn of time has had the “push hard – over to the left and up” design. With 40+ years of experience, they’ve determined that to be the best, safest, and easiest placement to use.

Air conditioning, defrosting, and heating controls should be intuitively operable with minimum or no need to glance at the knobs and buttons. I’m not sure this design passes that test.

I think it does. For one the number of buttons that are roughly the same size and shape has decreased. They’ve also gotten larger and easier to distinguish from one another.

Same with the radio controls, and they might be even worse.

They’re pretty much identical to the E90 3 series – which is to say that they are a slight improvement over adequate (which is the grade I’d give those in the current MINI or the E46 3 series).

Car designers, please take note: take a random driver and sit them down in the driver’s seat. Fashion a vision blocking device so they cannot see the knobs, dials, and buttons. Ask them to perform routine tasks like, “turn on the rear defroster.” And see how well they do.

BMW runs countless usability tests on their interiors they produce. I agree that more work could be done (especially on the iDrive interface) but they are active in this area.