Why the Aston Martin DBX is a Human Factors Nightmare

For quite some time, mom’s car, “Ivy” has caused users strong feelings of cognitive dissonance. Although members of the family, including myself, love the car and its powerful 600 horsepower engine, others have found that controlling it and navigating the design is extremely difficult. Ivy is a beautiful car with a sleek design, and is evidently produced for people with very strong resumes; however, several interface decisions challenge usability, affordances, and my emotional well-being.

Let’s start with the gear selection interface. Instead of a gearshift stick that resembles most cars, Ivy deviates from the traditional layout and offers buttons for Park, Reverse, Neutral, Drive, and Start Engine. They are arranged in a horizontal row just above the center screen, just as if they are equals. Unfortunately, they are not, and they certainly should not be treated as such. This particular formation contradicts basic schema theory and mental models of driving, where starting the car and driving the car are two very distinct cognitive actions. Placing the Start Engine button directly in the middle, despite it being a singular one-and-done action, while making Drive harder to reach ignores frequency-of-use principles and increases motor effort. As a result, there may be a brief moment of hesitation every time the user attempts to move. This forces what should be an automatic process into controlled processing, increasing workload and reducing fluency during routine driving experiences. Although seemingly minor, this can actually have larger consequences like increased cognitive load, hesitation, and unnecessary stress in situations where the interaction should feel automatic.

Moving onto the steering wheel. There are several issues here with signifiers and their discoverability. Arrow buttons are on each side of the steering wheel but lack clear function or immediate feedback. This ambiguity around their purpose results in trial-and-error interaction, which is incredibly problematic in contexts where error tolerance should be minimized.

Extraneous cognitive load is apparent with the excess icons visible while the user drives. The speedometer and odometer have an overwhelming number of tick marks, which reduces perceptual clarity and forces intentional visual processing. Instead of benefiting from pre-attentive processing, users may find themselves having to squint to focus. Additionally, between the speedometer and odometer, right in the center, is the total miles driven– the most visually salient location. From a SEEV-model perspective, the screen prioritizes salience over value, drawing attention to low-importance information instead of task-relevant cues. This is just confusing from the framework of information hierarchies. Total mileage has a very low task relevance while actively driving, yet it takes up the prime attentional placement. Meanwhile, actually useful information is scattered around the margins.

Physical control mapping also has issues. The drive mode selector (e.g. GT Sport vs Comfort) is controlled through a circular turnstile knob positioned right above an almost identical knob used for infotainment navigation. This violates stimulus-response compatibility and control-display mapping principles. The lack of visual and tactile differentiation between these controls increases the probability of mode errors, especially under conditions where the user’s attention is divided. Below these two knobs there is a touchpad, intended to be an alternative to the knob, utilizing inputs based on gestures. While it is seemingly intuitive, the touchpad requires large gestures to produce a response from the system, offering low gain, meaning a large control movement results in minimal display movement. The interaction largely conflicts with Multiple Resource Theory, as it demands simultaneous visual, cognitive, and motor engagement without meaningful payoffs. These demands are especially problematic since the infotainment system itself is not a touchscreen, so it forces users to indirectly engage with a highly visual interface.

The most significant issue with the car is its tendency to produce frequent false alarms with its proximity sensors. When slowing, the system triggers loud warning sounds and visual alerts indicating that an object is dangerously close, even when there is absolutely nothing surrounding the car. From a signal detection theory perspective, this system appears to be tuned with an extremely low threshold for threat detection, prioritizing false positives over accuracy. While this may be a feature intended to maximize safety, the unintended consequence is alarm fatigue. When alerts occur too often without a meaningful stimulus, users begin to distrust or ignore them. These false alarms increase cognitive load, startle the user and divert attention away from the road. Additionally, these alerts also function as interruptions since they are introducing startle responses and increasing resumption lag when attention must return to the primary driving task.

Finally, the center display is excessively bright and contains persistent icons. Visual indicators for driver assist features continue to be displayed even if they are not activated. This contributes to visual clutter and increasing conjunctive visual search demands. Instead of supporting selective attention, the interface competes for it, which contradicts situational awareness and thus increasing the risk of distraction.

In conclusion, the Aston Martin DBX demonstrates how advanced engineering and strong luxury aesthetics do not automatically translate into effective human-centered design. While Ivy satisfies users with her mechanical performance on the road and good looks, her interface repeatedly violates critical human factors principles by increasing cognitive load, disrupting automatic processing and competing for user attention. Across gear selection, display hierarchy, physical controls, false alarms and visual feedback, the car requires unnecessary demands on users’ perception, cognition, and action. This can create a driving experience that is mentally taxing and prone to error. Ultimately, this report illustrates how systems should adapt to humans, not the other way around. By considering how humans interact with technology and systems and aligning core human factors principles, the DBX could significantly improve its usability in a way that supports drivers. Until that happens, Ivy remains a reminder that good design is not about how something looks or performs, but how it feels for the user to drive.