Early on in the development of the, Tesla Model S, I got a chance to work on some of the prototyping of the 17" vertical touchscreen console that runs most of the systems we're used to having physical buttons for. Things like air conditioning knobs and radio buttons all had to be accounted for and replaced with a digital equivalent.
We were able to build a functional prototype and test it in the vehicle using Flash and Merapi to interface with the car's systems. This was a fun project for many reasons including working out of the Space X facility (one of Eon Musk's other ventures) in California.
This concept uses dockable icons to access features of the vehicle. The idea is to build muscle memory by tapping the same location on the screen to access an app. The UI is personalized and the driver has access to endless skins through an app store.
We explored all kinds of skins and UI configurations.
I spoke with Dave Meeker, a colleague from Roundarch, and Franz von Holzhausen, chief designer at Tesla, at Adobe Max about designing next generation automotive interfaces.
