Typical affordance design issue.
I associate dials with the ability to turn something up immediately. Like a cook top stove. (OK, our stove top is not a typical stove top, it's an electric wok, courtesy to my electronic geek hubby, but it gets the point across eh? ;-) )
Stove tops become hotter as you turn the dial up as the flame gets bigger. The problem with the car heater, unlike the cook top stoves is that the knob just turns up the temperature control, not the amount of hot air being blown in. In my usage, changing the desired maintained temperature is not a common action. I do however often want to feel warmer or cooler faster via stronger air current blowing at me. So in my case, I would rather not have the temperature controls be associated with the most easy to use button controls.
Design Solution.
- Turning up the dial increases the amount of air blown into the car
- Temperature control should be switched to the up and down buttons where the current buttons to increase the amount of air blowing in.
