USA TODAY International Edition
Driving new Ford F- 150 is like playing a video game
Mark Sich took everything he learned as a video game designer and put it into the 2021 Ford F- 150.
Essential to making the all- new pickup a success is easy- to- use technology.
“We realized that the truck customer is not a technophile,” he said. “They’re not interested in technology for technology’s sake.”
This is a man who has bachelor’s degrees in physics, architecture and civil engineering from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, plus a master’s degree in science, design and computation from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Not an underachiever.
Sich, 51, is responsible for 23 patents in everything from interactive hologram design to night vision systems. Now he’s an F- 150 man.
If the road is slippery from rain or mud, it may be hard to convey to drivers what a vehicle has to do to prepare itself for the driving conditions.
“Why not show the vehicle on the road that looks slippery, with raindrops and puddles,” said Sich, design manager for the F- 150 digital experience. “If you show the vehicle in that environment, then a driver makes an assumption about engineering that’s going to happen. ...
“This really was an idea driven by the video game stuff,” he said. “I’m battling monsters in the cold, I probably should have a coat on. The visualization required ... video games have been pushing visualization. We’re leveraging a lot of these tools and tool sets. A lot of our teams have a background in video games.”
The big challenge, “a little bit of an industry secret,” Sich said, is that everything must be industry grade so a truck can be in Alaska in minus 20 degrees or in Death Valley at 120 degrees. Those temperature gradients require a certain robustness in the digital components.
Customers can’t wait
Already, millions of Americans have F- 150 pickups in their driveway. The latest version of America’s bestselling truck is so hot that customers are ordering it sight unseen.
Yes, the redesigned vehicle revealed to the public June 25 delivers more power than its top five competitors.
But that’s not all.
Oil rigs came into play, too
Sich applied what he learned not just from the video game industry but also from the oil and gas industry. Video games require images that are easy to read and understand. Oil riggers in the Gulf of Mexico, Siberia and Africa need safety systems using computer technology that can be read quickly in case of emergency.
“You also have to design things with the mindset that people’s lives are dependent on giving information when they need it. You can’t be driving down the road and have the blue screen of death show up,” he said. “There’s a definite level of functionality and safety we build in.”
For example, use of “green, yellow, red” colors on the truck’s digital cluster came from the need to understand safety status on an oil rig. It’s the kind of easy- to- read symbol that an emergency worker using an F- 150 could quickly see from a distance.
All on a digital panel behind the steering wheel.
“You can bring information up and it’s seamless,” Sich said. “You have an avatar that’s a representation of you – you always know what your status is. You’re not thumbing through a manual.”
‘ So cool’
Craig Schmatz, 56, of Birmingham, chief engineer for the all- new F- 150, said Sich was instrumental in developing the cluster graphics.
“You have these selectable drive modes for the environment – slippery, wet, rock crawling,” Schmatz said. “You can go into sport mode changes. If you want eco changes to maximize fuel. You have this impactful graphic of the truck. It’s so cool.”
Ford recruited Sich from MIT in the early 1990s and then he left for awhile. His work in avant- garde architecture in California led to computer skill.
“I started coming up with designs and elements that I couldn’t draw anymore. I got interested in computers and the idea that you could walk through a building that hadn’t been built yet,” Sich said.
During the economic downturn, he went down to Louisiana to work on the oil rigs.
“You’d be in an isolated scenario, hundreds of miles from the nearest help and you needed to be aware of the condition of your equipment,” he said. “One of the first things you realized was the importance of the ease of communication for complex things – multiple circuits, different power wattages and when you’re getting close to operational limits.”
Turn- by- turn navigation information appears on the F- 150 digital cluster with a touch.
Innovative tech expertise is now essential for cars, and Sich is an expert, said Moray Callum, 61, Ford vice president of design. “Mark is one of those guys who uses both sides of the brain. He knows how to make things intuitive.”
When it’s snowing, the car can’t tell the driver, it needs to show the driver, Callum said. “Understand the difference between a video game and driving a car. They’re similar in terms of graphic messaging and the avatar development.”
So, in the case of the F- 150, Sich has created truck “avatars” or characters on the screen. It shows quickly and easily what is happening with the truck without using words to explain. It might show a truck powering through sand.
“We trust people like Mark to tell us what is the art of the possible,” Callum said. “We depend on digital groups to be experts in the field. When it’s done right, it can give us a competitive advantage. Design affects the initial purchase of the car, but user interface affects the life of the car. It’s really important.”