The interior designers shaping your next car
In-car tech o ers amazing new possibilities, but that doesn’t mean drivers are ready to embrace it all. Two experts explain how they decide what makes the cut. By Ian Adcock
Head-up displays, gesture recognition, voice controls, hands-free phones and semi-autonomous driving are just some of the challenges – or should that be opportunities? – interior designers face today. We talk to BMW’s head of interior design, Oliver Sieghart, and Christine Lindberg, Volvo’s senior director of interior design, about their contrasting approaches to making the best use of new tech.
Oliver Sieghart (BMW): ‘BMW is about driving and everything we do in the interior is about perfect ergonomics. As a premium brand we want to provide safety and 100 per cent interaction and dialogue between the driver and the car; on the other side there’s the sculptural geometry and the physical or visual experience supporting the brand’s identity.’
Christine Lindberg (Volvo): ‘Firstly, the freedom to move in a safe, sustainable manner. We want to make life less complicated for the driver throughout their journey. We are designing for customers’ lifestyles, giving them what they want and anticipating their needs. A big part of that is the serene feeling in our interiors; we don’t want a visual overload.
OS (BMW): ‘The design team is very aware of what our customers’ needs are globally and understanding the different requirements of European, American or Chinese drivers; the challenge is providing a perfect and safe solution for all of them.’
CL (Volvo): ‘Most consumers are expecting more features to simplify their lives, but design is also about delivering what they don’t know they want yet. You need to lead but you can’t lose your crowd on the way.’
OS (BMW): ‘A car with basic functions is definitely easier and a simple dial is sometimes best, but it’s also about what customers expect. There’s the possibility to go back to simple and easy dials, letting the car’s intelligence do the rest.’
CL (Volvo): ‘Hardware controls aren’t updateable over the air; the benefits of having functions in a touchscreen is updating them to improve the experience.’
OS (BMW): ‘Voice control or gesture recognition? It depends on the function and what you want to do. Speech recognition
will be one of the most important developments for the future. It’s not great when there are lots of people in the car, but the software and microphones are improving. I believe gesture will improve and get bigger in the future.’
CL (Volvo): ‘For us voice is superior, which is why we have teamed up with Google. Voice is making big strides in becoming more natural, understanding what people say and making intelligent use of that. Talking to a system and not feeling stupid is the mark of a good interface and I think we’re about to reach that point. Although we’re exploring other technologies we don’t think gesture is mature enough yet.’
OS (BMW): ‘You can’t suddenly cut a customer off from what they are used to and replace it with new technology – there needs to be a transition.’
CL (Volvo): ‘Writing recognition is popular in some markets, like China where they use it as a primary interface when texting, in the end it comes back to what you’re used to.’
OS (BMW): ‘Digital screens provide more flexibility; you can still have an analogue-style dial switching the information depending on the driving situation. A digital speedometer displaying large figures could be a very good compromise compared to an instrument cluster with fixed hardware.’
CL (Volvo): ‘As a preference I would say digital. It’s how you read things and that’s another reason for over-the-air updates. The way information is presented changes over time and people are getting more used to seeing digital displays.’
OS (BMW): ‘Instrumentation will become more of an entertainment package as the screens get bigger, especially when it comes to semi-autonomous driving. It’s about the time you spend in your car and that experience – increasingly that’s what will drive the difference between car brands.’
‘Talking to a system and not feeling stupid is the mark of a good interface’
CL (Volvo): ‘We don’t know what the future is, but we’re exploring options so we’re ready the day we do know.’