Last week I flew to Austin TX, site of the upcoming 2007 Usability Professionals’ Association annual conference.
Surprisingly, my rental car was was a Daewoo or Daihatsu, I forget which. (I didn’t think US rental car companies put Korean cars in their fleets.) It drove a lot better than I was expecting – I was prepared for a bone-jarring Hyundai-style ride.
However, when I stopped to fill the tank before returning it, I got a nasty surprise: the gas cap door release switch was nowhere to be found. I looked for it for a good 10 minutes, in all the usual places – next to the seat rails, to the left of the steering column on the lower dashboard panel, on the center console…to no avail.
Meanwhile, a line of cars started piling up behind me, all waiting to get gas. I scrambled around frantically in the dim light, until….finally…I found it. On the door panel. Tucked underneath the power window buttons. Completely invisible from the driver’s seat.
Man, was *that* annoying.
Why couldn’t they just put it on the floor or the dashboard, like every other manufacturer?
