user interface

This forks from issues that arose in the 12V-battery thread.

When reasonable-size, moderate-resolution, RGB screen real estate is available, when should competent designers choose to negotiate through a small, low-resolution, monochrome screen? In particular, can anyone think of a good reason why the Prius Prime configuration options accessed through the pop-out displays on the left side of the instrument cluster are not instead found in the multimedia menus?

Am I missing something, or was this likely to have been a project-management failure, perhaps with two teams working in different facilities and forbidden to talk to each other?