Final Bachelor Project · 2025-2026 · Future Mobility Squad
Negotiating the Road
A physical-digital interface for driver-ACC negotiation, designing for the moment a car's automation and its driver disagree about what should happen.
Summary
Adaptive cruise control (ACC) is now common, but drivers often cannot tell what the system is about to do, or why. This system-understanding gap is usually treated as an information-display problem. I reframed it as a negotiation where the driver and the automation each hold intentions, and the interface should let them resolve disagreement, not just broadcast state.
I explored this with the Reflective Transformative Design Process across two iterations. The first was a co-creation paper prototype, testing dashboard-visualisation and steering-wheel concepts with participants to find which physical and visual cues communicated intent without instruction. The second was a functional physical prototype combined with a CARLA driving simulation, used to run a structured user test of the interaction in motion.
The project is where every strand of my development is combined: the domain came from my work as a chauffeur, the conviction that a screen alone would not solve it came from years at Uw Computerstudent, and the technical depth to actually build it came from my courses and internship.
Main learning points
- Reframing is the highest-leverage design move. Shifting the problem from "display" to "negotiation" organised every later decision.
- Physical-digital, not screen-only. I learned to design cues that communicate through feel and placement, validating my vision that interaction cannot live on a touchscreen alone.
- Simulation as a test bed. Building and using a CARLA simulation let me test an in-motion interaction safely.
- My weaknesses surfaced honestly. Planning discipline and the aesthetic finishing of my prototype are where I felt the limits of my current skill, and they directly set my next learning goals.
- Defending decisions in technical and societal terms. Framing the work as a safety imperative, not only an aesthetic preference, pushed my weakest expertise area forward.
