1. AI: Artificial Intelligence will play an increasingly important role in the future in-car UI. For example, advanced systems will be able to learn a drivers/passengers preferences and habits, which in turn would offer them personalised experiences and recommendations.
2. Gesture Controls: This technology allows for making a safer and more intuitive experiences by allowing the driver to control various functions without the need to touch the cars interface.
3. Immersive Experiences: The in-car environment is the ideal environment to create immersive experiences. It’s a place where users are likely to spend hours a week travelling back-and-to to destinations, therefore it’s an ideal environment to provide the opportunity to affect the human senses and emotions. With the used of AR, interactive mood lighting and sound, the in-car experience is going to be more engaging and personalised in the future.
4. Intuitive interfaces: As in-car technology becomes more complex, there will be a greater need for interfaces that are intuitive and easy to use. This could include more human-centred/natural language voice commands and touchscreens with haptic feedback.
5. Integration with other devices: In the future vehicles will become even more part of the broader ecosystem for smart connected devices, such as home systems and smart phones. It will allow for a truly connected digital experience.
6. A focus on safety: In-car UI will continue to develop to ensure that it is safe for drivers and passengers to use while on the road, as well as an increase investment in cyber-security.

In-car UI is going to be focused on creating a more personalised, custom and intuitive environment. It’s going to be a “vessel” of creating mood defining immersive experiences that offers a seamless digital connection with the non-car world.

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With decades of progress in the tech world, it has led to a variety of possible interfaces: GUIs, gesture-based and touch-based systems as well as speech recognition modules.

Whilst mobile and desktop applications have become sophisticated and intuitive, with automotive UIs, it can become even more complicated since there is the extra factor to consider of the users’ safety as well as the fact that an interface could ultimately contribute to whether a vehicle is desirable. A poor usability interface could lead to huge financial losses for the vehicles manufacturer if users have a negative experience.

What are some of the basic design principles for automotive user interfaces?

• Messages and copy should be short to prevent distractions from driving
• For the majority of cases dark UI’s reduce the risk of glairiness and often achieve a better contrast for GUI elements.
• Avoid complex gestures. Sometimes a physical button often performs better.
• Readable fonts. Type should be easy for the driver to read and a suitable font size will also add to the experience.

Google and Apple vehicle UI’s

In 2021, Google developed an automotive design system (Design for Driving Foundations), that they utilise when making their Android OS.

Here are 3 best design practices that they suggest:

• Avoid animations, video and auto-scrolling content, particularly if its not related to driving and distracts the driver.
• Consider adjusting the interface colour scheme to reflect the time of the day.
• Touch elements should have an appropriate size.

Apples’ offer to the industry is CarPlay, a technology system which uses the iOS functionality on the screen of your cars display. It allows the user to interact with their iPhone via the vehicles touch screen.

User expectations drive the need for better vehicle UI/UX

With today’s iPad generation, where people who see a display expect to be able to touch and interact with it, they expect that their cars display interface to reflect and even strengthen the brand that they’re buying into. They expect the interface to not only connect to the digital world but also connect to the environment around them. Ultimately they want to form an emotional connection with their car, even if it’s subliminal.  

What’s the future for Vehicle GUI’s?

Customisation. One of the most important features of any device or software can offer is customisation. Users no longer want to just settle with pre-manufactured software that doesn’t allow you to use it in the way that you want.

Some vehicles already come with a digital dashboard/display which is somewhat customisable – to an extent. For example, users may be able to customise their driving mode, which in turn can make driving more pleasant and potentially safer. However, the real game-changer in the future will be the option that will allow users to completely customise the visual elements of dashboards, from choosing colour schemes to rearranging graphical elements.

It’s without a doubt that we are going to see some amazing designs in the near future, which are going to inspire users to drive even more. The only challenge we will all face is to ensure our eyes remain on the road!

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You may have the opinion that a brand is a company’s logo, its website, or marketing material. You may even have the opinion that brand refers to a company’s tone of voice it portrays in copy and correspondence or perhaps.

People have different perspectives, meaning a brand is not what’s intended by a company or organisation but how its interpreted by its users and customers.

My perspective is that a brand is all of the above. I like to think of a brand as the company’s DNA. It’s the building blocks of everything you do and arguably one of the most powerful assets you have as you grow and develop your business.

What’s a brand strategy?

A brand strategy is a long-term blueprint as to how your brand will reach its pre-defined goals. A successful brand strategy should define the core elements of your brand and then articulate comprehensive brand guidelines as well as how you promote it in your sector.

Here’s a quick overview of some of the elements you’ll need to create a compelling brand strategy:

What’s is the brand’s purpose

A transparent brand’s purpose should create an alignment inside and outside of your company. A lot of employees in companies are often confused about and company’s purpose. If your staff aren’t clear about your brand purpose, your marketing and communication with customers could become a problem.

Brands Voice

A brand’s voice is how you communicate with your customers on your website, social platforms, printed material, and emails. That involves the tone and kind of language you’ll use as well as the visuals you’ll use to communicate. An example of a brand that has adopted a humour and fun brand voice is Aldi.

Brand Personality

A lot of companies overlook the importance of giving their brand a personality. Humanising your brand can help customers connect.

Target Audience

One of the most important components in a branding strategy is establishing who your target audience is and uncovering details about them such as demographics, problems they may face, and behavioural patterns.

Brands Values
By establishing your company’s values, you can judge how your brand will be perceived in the marketplace.

To conclude; A brand strategy will not only help you to acquire new users and customers, but it should also help make future marketing efforts easier and more focused.

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Today, almost anyone can get a website up and running with relative ease, however, that doesn’t guarantee it’ll be that effective for you and your company.

A website is “open” 24/7 and is effectively your storefront to the world, with users forming an opinion within a few minutes it’s vital that you make a good impression, with intuitive and effective design and content.

Here are 6 web design practices that will help to ensure success for your site.

1. Consistency in branding

It’s important to keep branding consistent across all of you marketing material, including your website. Your company’s logo, typography, images, iconography and brand voice all reinforce your value proposition and reputation.

2. Clear Call To Actions (CTA’s)

Usually when you have a site you want the users to do something, such as subscribe to newsletters, view and purchase products or make an appointment, so it’s important to motivate your target audience to perform that action. You can achieve this in a number of ways, such as:

• Having a bold, coloured CTA in a location that is highly visible eg within the navigation or page headers.
• Make the copy within the CTA obvious what’s going to happen if the user clicks on it eg “view product” and “sign up to newsletter”
• Less is more. You want to avoid too many CTA’s, as too many could distract the user from performing the key task that you want them to do.

3. Clean design

It is important that your site is easy for the user to scan and your content is digestible, people don’t have time to waste trying to find content if it’s not obvious.

You don’t want to overload your audience with bright contrasting colours, too many images, and pages of copy, instead make the website easy to use and an enjoyable experience with clean design and meaningful content.  

It is also important to make use of white space. White space doesn’t mean having blocks of white boxes all over your website but means having “negative” space between layout items such as paragraphs and images. Have more white space on your web pages will allow your content to be more scannable and it’ll also be easier on the eyes.

4. A/B Testing

A/B testing is a method of comparing different versions of a webpage to see which one performs the best based on your goal for the page. You can use A/B testing to determine which CTA is the most effective or which headline works better, the options are endless.

Collecting the right data takes the leg work out of optimising a website. A/B testing allows you to make decisions based on statistical data, which is always a good design practice.

5. Website speed

The speed of your site plays an important role in the overall user experience. A slow website will frustrate users and can result in them abandoning the site. Google also takes into consideration your website speed when ranking sites, so if you want to appear relatively high in search results, it should be something that you are considering.

6. Heatmaps

Heatmaps present you with visual feedback on where your site users are spending time on your site, they work by tracking your users’ mouse movements so you can identify the areas that are receiving the most attention.

With information from heatmaps you can:

• Optimise your design, you can improve the elements that aren’t getting a much attention
• Optimise placement of CTA’s, you can place your most valuable CTA’s in the areas that are getting the most attention

Conclusion

The most important takeaway from this article is that if you want a website to generate results you can just leave it once it’s built. Your site will require continuous ongoing optimisation and improvements to serve your company and customers.

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Whilst every project is different and the process tailored to the needs of the job, my design process tends to follow the same basic structure:

The Brief

Every job starts with a brief. This phase will help me as a designer to gain a better understanding of the business I’m working with, the people involved and what the desired outcome is for the project. With these initial questions answered, we’ll collaborate to identify and confirm the project objectives, deliverables, budget and deadlines.

Research & Ideas

With the brief set, I now have the information I need to conduct research, look at the competition, recognise trends and fully immerse myself in the subject. From this, I can begin to work on initial concepts which I will then present to gather feedback whilst evaluating against the brief.

Development

By this stage the project is really taking shape and both myself and the client should have a relatively clear idea of the direction of the design. Concepts are further developed and brought to life. During the development stage, designs may be periodically shared with the client for feedback to keep the project moving in the right direction.

Final Designs

Once everybody involved in the project is happy with the designs we reach the ‘sign off stage’. This may involve supplying the final artwork to the client or sending it directly to the printer. It’s of utmost importance to me that the client goes away happy. All going well, the initial project could be the start of a much longer-term relationship.

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