"Industry is at a turning point" says HMI expert

The notion of merging UX, HMI and interior design seems well founded given the inherent crossover in those disciplines. How the driver (and passengers) interact with the vehicle is now a heady mix of digital and physical touchpoints, and brands have sought to balance those two fields to varying degrees of success. 

Certainly over the past five years or more we have seen digital take a leading role in that conversation, but anecdotal evidence suggests the scales may have tipped far more in favour of software. That software does not always chime well with its physical host. 

As we reported earlier this month, a new studio has opened with the expressed goal of unifying the strengths of interior, HMI and UX design under one roof. Östra will be led by former JLR, Lotus and Afry designers Rob Dolton and Ben Guyer. Dolton spoke to Car Design News about the impetus behind this approach and why the industry is, in his eyes, "at a turning point."

"We love design, we love HMI and we want to keep actually doing that job," he says. "We want to help the industry get to grips with the missteps that have been made and make car interiors great again."

Part of that will indeed come down to the combination of digital and physical — things which are largely considered separate entities. But Dolton suggests "they are one and the same when it comes to car interiors" and believes the studio can help to simplify the conversation. 

"Unlike most other designers I speak software and hardware; and unlike most UXers I don't speak a strange binary language that car people don't understand. Plus, I actually really love cars!" he affirms. "It's a strange world as people find this almost impossible to believe, so I am trying to spread the gospel of integrated UX-HMI-interior design teams. I did it at Lotus and it gave us the Eletre/Emeya interior, which in time I hope will be better understood."

Dolton makes reference to a man by the name of Jaron Lanier who holds the title of 'Prime Unifiying Scientist' at Microsoft. As a founder of various successful tech start-ups he is inherently interested in (and supportive of) software but also champions systems that 'reflect human values.' Dolton appears to concur with this approach. 

"Lanier is great because he is trying to teach the world that software isn't magic, its as physical and real as concrete or steel," Dolton explains. "It takes huge teams thousands of hours to create software, and if people don't think its real just look at all the servers, electrical cables and energy is needed to make it happen. In many ways the car world needs to understand this, because they treat software as a kind of all seeing god that they don't quite understand; it should be treated as just another part of the process that is integrated and understood."

We are seeing a similar theme elsewhere in the industry, with lighting, CMF and UX increasingly viewed almost as one collaborative field. In separating UX/UI as its own discipline — and on the face of it quite fairly so given its specialised skillset — some of the gains that could have been had are waiting to be found. "UX/UI is confused and isolating. It should be integrated into the design team," he affirms, "with no barriers between digital products and physical products. They do the same thing."