While the general experience of driving a car has remained remarkably consistent for over a century — gas pedal, brake, steering wheel — the technology inside of vehicles is always evolving. The latest developments in human-machine interface (HMI) have created new user experiences of drivers that reflect their evolving preferences and needs.

Companies at all stages of the automotive manufacturing process will have to pay attention to these developmental steps to remain competitive, whether they're focused on consumer cars or fleet vehicles. Producing more intuitive — and safer — HMIs can become a differentiator for a contemporary automaker.

Automotive user experience: what do modern drivers demand?

Convenient interactive features have permeated every corner of life. Through a smartphone or other device, a consumer can complete a staggering variety of tasks with a simple gesture. This is the kind of experience automakers will have to compete with as they shape the next generation of automotive features.

In a more specific sense, automakers like Tesla have changed the paradigm for the rest of the industry. As a much younger market entrant than its legacy competitors, Tesla has used a software development mindset to ensure that consumers always have a range of digital options available on a large, central touchscreen.

Specific customer preferences around vehicle experience include:

• Simplicity: While the software development tools available to automakers allow them to add numerous digital features, it's important to ensure this process never leads to overcomplicated interfaces. People should be able to find the exact option they want with minimum searching. When there are too many options available to drivers, it's not just irritating for drivers; it's potentially distracting — behind the wheel, which can represent a safety risk.
• Personalization: One of the most important realizations an automaker can have about driver preferences is that there will never be one universal experience that pleases everyone. In an era of digital displays not constrained by physical limitations about button or gauge placement, this opens the door for motorists to demand flexible, customizable instrument panels. Everything from battery life and navigation directions to media player controls can move between various screens.
• Feedback: One added consideration around the digitization of vehicle controls and readouts is the presence or absence of feedback. Designers should carefully consider when to apply these elements and design them thoughtfully. When signals are clear, drivers don't have to look away from the road to verify that their input has been accepted, creating safer driving conditions.

Drivers today, having experienced the first generation of digitally enabled, software-first automotive experiences, are looking for cars that don't just include technology but that use advanced features to create a simple, easy driving experience. This can be a kind of North Star for designers and developers working on automotive HMI projects: Tech, for its own sake, can be a liability, but practical tech is a positive differentiator.

Next-generation trends in automotive HMI features

Driven by those customer expectations and automakers' competing efforts to meet them, HMI design in the automotive space is a large and growing space. According to MarketsandMarkets research, the auto HMI market totaled $23.9 billion in 2023 and will be worth $40.2 billion by 2028.

Macro-trends: new ways of driving

The high and rising expenditures on design and development efforts are going into creating experiences that differ in important ways from standard driving. For example, researchers highlight:

• Electric vehicles: Features associated with electric cars, such as battery charge management, demand a new suite of gauges and interface elements. Crafting appropriate experiences for electric vehicle drivers will be a major priority as the use of these cars and trucks expands. These cars are products of the born-digital era, with automakers such as Tesla taking a software-first approach to their design. Legacy brands such as Jaguar have made bold moves to compete. Amid a brand refresh and an electrification push, Jaguar has committed to becoming all-electric from 2025 onward. Experience design challenges are twofold for electric vehicles: folding in new components and keeping up with legacy competition.

• Self-driving vehicles: Driver assistance features are similarly rising in popularity, and will call for a new selection of controls and displays. Ensuring the clear, safe operation of self-driving technology is a relatively novel challenge for designers and developers. The safety imperative with these features will have to receive special attention. Driver education around what cars and trucks can and can't do with autonomous features turned on should be a priority when creating displays for vehicles using the technology.

The rise of these new vehicle options shows that even the most basic tenets of auto design are now evolving. Systems and interface design can and should change along.

Specific HMI priorities

Once they've internalized the need to produce user-friendly, tech-enabled driving experiences for the next generation of cars, what will designers create? The past few years have served as a useful demonstration of the industry's direction, as leading automakers have delivered key HMI feature advancements.

Areas of focus include:

• New types of controls: Touching a button — or a screen — is just one way of interacting with a vehicle. Empowered by new types of sensors, automakers are free to experiment with everything from voice recognition to gesture-based control. The ability to perform simple systems actions via hand movements or voice commands allows drivers to spend less time with their hands off the wheel or their eyes off the road than it would take to use a button. As long as automakers create intuitive interfaces in this mold, they can simultaneously build convenience and safety into their control schemes.
• More advanced personal assistant features: The recent trend toward powerful generative AI (GenAI) chatbots has reached the automotive space, allowing automakers to create new and more user-friendly experiences for drivers. Modern digital assistants, such as the offerings from Volvo and BMW, can grant access to the full suite of vehicle features, as well as other connected devices — BMW drivers can interact with their smart homes from their cars, for example.
• Biometric controls: The ability to sense who is driving a vehicle based on biometric data such as fingerprints or facial features can serve as a security tool to prevent unauthorized drivers from starting the car, and they can also act as extensions of a vehicle's personalization suite. For example, if a vehicle can detect which known person is driving it at a given time, it can adjust customizable features such as gauge placement to suit that individual's established preferences.
• Contextually adjusted interfaces: While some useful interface adjustments are tied to users' preferences, others can occur automatically based on the current situation. In environments such as highway driving or intense traffic, automotive systems can simplify themselves automatically, cutting down on less important readouts to create a clear, legible set of outputs for drivers.
• Augmented reality (AR) displays: Another technology area that may enable drivers to spend more time looking at the road is AR integration. By projecting information directly into a vehicle operator's field of vision instead of forcing them to look at a gauge or other display, design teams can promote safe driving while simultaneously delivering a curated selection of data points, including speed, battery charge, and navigation directions.

As these types of features become more common, drivers' feedback and reactions to them will inform future refinement. As with any kind of user interface or user experience design, automotive design is at its best when it reflects the way people interact with the systems in real-world conditions.

As connected devices linked to the Internet of Things (IoT), today's vehicles are well-suited to provide user data for designers to work from. Automakers have access to vast amounts of information. Those who commit to analyzing this information to learn about usage patterns and trends can create a new generation of automotive interfaces that will suit drivers' preferences.

The present moment for automakers — with electrification and driver assistance features on the rise alongside general IT trends like AI — is one when rapid development is possible and desirable. As long as advancements are made with drivers' practical needs and preferences in mind, innovative automakers have a chance to make a mark in the industry.

Committing to automotive HMI design

Automakers eager to move to the head of their industry may find they need help from outside of their usual teams and personnel pools. This is because the automotive world and more general digital product and service design are converging. Digital product design is now a priority for vehicle manufacturers.

Fortunately for car companies, it's simple to collaborate with design and development experts who have extensive experience in crafting user-friendly experiences and HMIs. This is where a partner like Transcenda can make a powerful impact on the overall success of a next-generation automotive design.

Our experts are available for every level of engagement, from consulting and advisory roles to side-by-side fully integrated design and engineering work. Possible collaboration types include working from the earliest phases to create a wholly new experience or refining and iterating on an existing system, turning user feedback into meaningful revisions.

Cars and software are growing increasingly intertwined, and the answer for automakers is clear. It's time to start thinking in software design terms to truly create the experiences that will keep drivers happy and loyal for years to come

‍Contact Transcenda to learn how we can help your digital products excel.