B.A Thesis | Academic Project
2026
The Loss of Touch
[UX Research & Design] [Automotive HMI Design] [Speculative Design]
Touchscreens took over the car. Buttons disappeared. The automotive industry's shift toward full-glass interiors was driven by aesthetics and cost reduction. The result is a generation of vehicles where adjusting the temperature, or activating a wiper requires a driver to look away from the road, navigate a menu, and tap a flat surface with no physical feedback confirming the action landed.
This thesis argues that the problem was never the screen. It was the loss of touch.
Three speculative artefacts exploring what automotive HMI could look like if tactile usability were treated as a non-negotiable design requirement as safety and usability case.
The Approach
Double Diamond
Research Framework
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De Waard's 1994 Cognitive Load Model
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Don Norman's Affordance Framework
Market Research
Best-selling cars in Europe 2024-2025
budget
premium
Dacia Sandero
Renault Clio
Toyota Yaris
VW T-Roc
Audi Q5
Mercedes GLC
BMW X3
Primary Research
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Qualitative User Interviews
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User Shadowing
Interviews
Driving experience
Driving type
Distance
Countries
7
3-27 years
from Urban to Cross-country
18 km - 400> km
Italy, Germany, Poland, Lithuania, Latvia
What I found
Digitization vs. Tactile
The ongoing consolidation of vehicle controls onto flat touchscreens has created a severe feedback deficit, stripping away the passive haptics and spatial affordances drivers rely on.
"Premium Paradox" and Real-World User Friction
Premium vehicle ownership does not correlate with better usability; heavily consolidated touch-displays in tech-forward cars induce the highest rates of driver confusion and workarounds.
Menu-Buried Controls
Drivers forced to interact with touchscreen sub-menus while moving experience severe visual and cognitive overload, directly increasing
near-miss collision risks.
Desired Passive Haptics and Blind-Operable Tactility
Users universally crave physical or simulated tactile feedback (such as active force-feedback or rising texture) to enable safe, eyes-free target acquisition.
implications for artefact
Restoring Passive Haptics
The artefact bridges the safety gap of flat touchscreens by introducing on-demand physical geometry, allowing eyes-free target acquisition through muscle memory.
Hardware-Software Vulnerability
Real-world durability relies on designing reliable fail-safes so that critical elements like hazard lights never get trapped in a flat or frozen state during a system glitch.
"If It Ain't Broke" Restraint
Steering wheel controls remain entirely physical. Complex dynamic transformations should be restricted strictly to high-friction digital menus, avoiding the over-engineering of basic physical controls that already work seamlessly
Moodboard
Artefact 01
Steering wheel
Artefact 02
Dashboard
Artefact 03
Microfluidics on-demand screen
Artefact 3 was tested through physical prototyping to validate tactile logic. Not engineering, but interaction feel.
This is a speculative design project. The artefacts are not engineered for production, and no claim is made that they are. They propose a direction and make the conversation harder to avoid.