When you think Mini, you probably don’t think of infotainment. Personally, I think of the British flag taillights, the distinct exterior, and the surprising room on the inside. But after driving the Mini John Cooper Works Countryman over the past week, infotainment might well be something I think of more often when it comes to Mini. It’s charming.
It also, however, suffers from all the traps that other legacy automakers fall into when it comes to software design. Mini has something on its hands here — but it still needs some work.
Bringing the charm
The first thing that stood out to me about the system when I got in the car was how fun it was. That all starts with the display. It’s round! No, it’s not curved — the screen is a big, round display sits in at 9.4 inches, and I found it plenty large enough for day-to-day use.
It’s actually the only real display in the vehicle too. It can show things like driving speed, but the vehicle I drove also had a heads-up display for that, reflected in a panel of glass behind the steering wheel.
Of course, a round display isn’t enough to make something charming — but there are other touches as well. There’s a little spinning flower icon that shows up on the power slider when the vehicle isn’t using any power. There are decently designed animations, and everything kind of follows the rounded display, including the curved controls around the edges of the screen. There’s also a main menu bar that lets you easily switch between the different windows on the screen.
Mini has made good use of the circular screen for those who stick to using the first-party software, instead of a service like CarPlay. The built-in maps completely fill the screen, with step-by-step directions on one side and a graphical map on the other. At a glance, the software actually looks good — which is more than almost every other legacy automaker can claim.
There are other things that I love about the vehicle’s controls. Outside of the display, you’ll turn the power on by turning a little knob that simulates turning a key. If only Mini built similarly cool controls for climate.
Extra taps are the enemy
Good looks don’t mean software is well-designed, unfortunately. Software also has to work well — and Mini is just so close, yet so far.
Lets start with CarPlay — a service that many customers will want to use. Unfortunately, CarPlay is stuck in a rectangular window in the big, round display, immediately making the usable space of the software a whole lot smaller. That, of course, can’t be blamed on Mini — but it is something that Mini has to contend with if it wants a round screen.
CarPlay integration is pretty good in the vehicle — but not perfect. I love the fact that the shortcut buttons on the menu bar integrate with CarPlay where necessary. The media button brings up your media, while the maps button jumps you straight into CarPlay’s maps and the phone button pulls up the phone app. The only thing missing? A way to get to CarPlay’s home screen. The Home button in that menu bar is global to Mini’s software, which makes sense. But I use the widget-based CarPlay home screen, with my maps and media all on the same display. Mini’s implementation means that if I jump into the climate controls screen, I have to tap the media button (or maps, or phone), then tap CarPlay’s own home button to get back to the main CarPlay screen. That’s a roundabout way to get back to a screen that plenty of CarPlay customers use. I’m not sure on the right fix for this menu bar strategy — perhaps if there’s a way for Mini to know a user was using that main screen, then both the maps and media button would bring you back to it.
But the confusion continues beyond CarPlay — and straight into climate controls. There’s good news and bad news. The good news is how the climate controls look. The bad news is that they don’t do what you think they should do based on how they look.
With the A/C on, you’ll have a little circular badge showing you the temperature, right in the middle of what looks like should be a slider. Slide up, into the red, for warmer, and down, into the blue, for colder, right? Well, it is a slider — but to access it, you first have to tap on the temperature, then slide up or down. That’s just silly — extra taps when you’re driving are dangerous. Even worse is that the slider only controls temperature. You can’t control fan speed without tapping a separate button, in the menu bar, which brings you to a full-screen climate controls menu. There’s plenty of space for persistent fan speed controls, and frankly, they should be there.
Getting better
Are these major issues? No, they’re not — but they do represent the fact that carmakers still haven’t figured out that their software should be as easy to use as possible. Extra taps are the enemy of automotive infotainment design, but carmakers seem have failed to realize that to this point.
Mini’s infotainment system isn’t just charming — it actually verges on being very well-designed, and it’s certainly better designed than efforts from most other legacy automakers. I appreciate that Mini has made a serious effort, and the software was generally snappy and responsive, which always helps. I just hope the company continues to iterate on it.
