I’ve been reflecting on our automotive industry work recently. Designing for the automotive industry means designing for two different worlds at once: the emotional, brand-led human experience of buying and owning a car and the safety-critical, split-second world of the interfaces inside it. We’ve spent years working across both, from retail platforms to driver HMI and automotive innovation and what keeps pulling us back is the same thing that makes it challenging: nothing in this industry stays still long enough to get comfortable. Exciting stuff.
As I reflect I realise that the answer to the question I posed to myself “what have you learned from automotive work” is “a lot, but we’re still learning and always will be”. Here’s where that’s taken us so far and why we keep choosing to work in an industry that rarely sits still.
Design for the Automotive Industry – retail
Our work with Sytner Group started as internal tool-based UI support, moved onto a website redevelopment project and turned into an ongoing design and digital strategy partnership. What’s stayed become apparent is how much the retail side of automotive has in common with the interface design and innovation side. A car-buying journey now moves constantly between physical showroom and digital platform, often within the same day for the same customer and the complete system design has to hold up at every handover between the two. We helped Sytner Group to establish a scalable design system alongside that work specifically so the experience could stay consistent as it grew and evolved, rather than solving the same problem freshly on every new page or campaign.
What we keep learning here is that pace is the deciding factor. Retail expectations in this sector shift as quickly as the technology inside the vehicles themselves and a design system that flexes with that pace and is easily adapted and updated becomes an instant asset.
Design for the Automotive Industry – UI innovation
We enjoy automotive work because it refuses to sit still. Electrification changed what a dashboard needs to show and what a driver and their passengers expect from a vehicle. Connected and autonomous vehicle technology is changing what a driver’s attention should be spent on. Customer expectations shift as fast as the technology does and are shaped as much by what people experience on their phones as by anything happening inside a showroom. Designing consistently and seamlessly across the physical and digital environments means managing multiple factors at once: engineering constraints, safety requirements, brand identity and human attention, all moving concurrently.
That’s why work in the automotive industry doesn’t get old. A finished project is not a thing, we have to build modular, flexible, adaptive systems that move with the changing requirements of the time, the users and the businesses.
Automotive HMI
Our work with Jaguar Land Rover has taken us on a unique automotive innovation journey. We’ve worked on driver UI, HMI and HUD, research and development projects, ‘future visioneering’, technology demonstrators, 3D visualisation, feature testing, user testing, autonomous vehicle UI development and global mass-market app development.
One of the clearest examples of that journey is an early concept for automated journey tracking that we developed with JLR’s Electrical Engineering Research and Development team, refined through several rounds of testing and eventually launched into a global consumer market as the ‘Go I-PACE’ app. It’s a good practical example of the same thinking behind our post on turning a proof of concept into a market-ready product, played out in an industry where the gap between the two is often wider and higher stakes than most.
We’ve also spent time translating early-stage automotive technology ideas into realistic simulations and working prototypes, work that’s helped engineering teams get buy-in from stakeholders before a concept is ready for development. That’s a different kind of design problem – realising the as-yet un-realised… Helping people see something that doesn’t fully exist yet, clearly enough to invest in making it real.
Design for the Automotive Industry
Putting our automotive retail and innovation work side by side, a pattern emerges. Automotive design rarely rewards a single specialism. The best work we’ve done here has come from being able to move between a marketing team’s priorities and an engineering team’s constraints without treating them as separate conversations. A retail platform still has to earn trust the way a safety-critical interface does. A driver display still has to build a brand experience the same way a showroom does.
It’s becoming increasingly clear that the ability to move fluidly between disciplines and contexts and to understand and relate to different stakeholder priorities is what actually matters for design work in the automotive industry.
This is why automotive has become one of the sectors we most enjoy working in. It rewards curiosity and empathy and challenges every decision – we’re still learning with every project.
If you’re wrestling with a similar question in your automotive business, we’d enjoy comparing notes.
Photo by Ed Wingate on Unsplash
Frequently asked questions
We've worked across both automotive retail and vehicle interface design, including a scalable digital retail platform for Sytner Group and driver UI, HMI and HUD research and development with Jaguar Land Rover.
HMI, or human machine interface, design covers how a driver or passenger interacts with a vehicle's digital systems, including dashboards, head-up displays and infotainment, with safety and split-second usability as central design constraints.
Both. We've worked with retail and marketing teams on digital showroom and ecommerce experiences, as well as with engineering and research teams on in-vehicle interfaces and see real value in moving between the two rather than specialising in only one.
Electrification, connected and autonomous vehicle technology and shifting customer expectations are all changing what a dashboard, display or retail journey needs to do, often faster than a single project's timeline.
Yes. We've taken early research and development concepts through prototyping, testing and refinement to full production and global launch, including work originating from a research and development team through to a public consumer app.
Retail design centres on brand experience and conversion across digital and physical touchpoints. Vehicle interface design centres on safety and split-second usability. Both still need to build trust and carry brand identity, just under different constraints.
