In Market
|
IDEA & RED DOT AWARD
|
Safety- Critical HMI
|
In Vehicle interaction
|
Multi Brand
|
Trucking Industry
|
In Market | IDEA & RED DOT AWARD | Safety- Critical HMI | In Vehicle interaction | Multi Brand | Trucking Industry |
HMI_Living and Driving Control Module
Volvo VNL Platform. Volvo Trucks North America
2
Industry awards - IDEA & Red dot
VNL
Platform - Flagship heavy-duty North American truck
6 +
HMI domains delivered - cluster, infotainment, DECM, LECM, Icons, app
2025
Released and on the market
01 - Brief
Where safety,
complexity, and scale
collide
01
Safety-critical at 80mph
Commercial truck drivers manage routes, cargo, fuel, temperature, and vehicle health - all while navigating high-speed freight corridors. Every HMI decision directly affects driver safety and delivery outcomes. There is no tolerance for confusion in the cab.
02
A system, not a screen
This wasn't a single-screen redesign. It spanned instrument cluster, infotainment, two physical control modules, iconography, and a companion app — all of which had to form a coherent, unified interaction language across hardware and software simultaneously.
03
Multi-brand with one foundation
The VNL platform shares foundational architecture with Mack Trucks and European Volvo platforms. Every design decision had to be portable — flexible enough for brand differentiation, robust enough to scale without duplication of engineering effort.
My Role
Interaction Designer- Strategy, HMI, Advanced Design, Multi-brand
Timeline
2019 – 2020
Released on the market in 2025
Company
Volvo Trucks North America
(shared with MACK & EU platforms)
Partners
UX Designers, Industrial Designers, Engineers, Feature Leaders, Product Planners, Ergonomics & Safety
02 - Driver Needs
The driver is
never just driving
Long-haul commercial truck drivers operate in one of the most demanding work environments of any profession. They're managing fuel economy, route optimization, cargo temperature, vehicle diagnostics, regulatory compliance (HOS logs), communication, and fatigue — simultaneously. Designing for this ecosystem requires understanding the full cognitive load, not just the screen in front of them.
Fuel Efficiency
Fuel is the highest operating cost for fleets. Drivers need instant, actionable feedback on driving behaviors that affect MPG—not buried in menus.
Safety
Every HMI interaction competes with road attention. Warning hierarchies, glanceability, and physical control placement are all life-safety decisions.
Drive Focus
Information architecture must surface the right data at the right moment. Secondary tasks (routes, calls, music) must never demand more than a glance.
Productivity
Drivers are workers. HOS logging, delivery confirmations, fleet messaging, and vehicle health checks must be fast and low-friction to protect their time.
Connected
Fleet managers, dispatchers, navigation, and entertainment — the cab is an office. Seamless connectivity between in-cab and mobile is non-negotiable.
"Designing for a truck driver isn't designing for a commuter with a bigger screen. It's designing for a professional whose attention is split across a 40-ton vehicle, a 500-mile route, and a dispatcher on the radio — all at once."
03 - Living Environment
The cab is also
home
Long-haul drivers spend days, sometimes weeks in their cabs. The Living Environment Control Module governs climate, lighting, bunk controls, and comfort settings: the part of the truck that makes the difference between a workspace and a livable environment. Designing this required understanding driver rest patterns, temperature management in extreme conditions, and the contextual switch from "drive mode" to "rest mode."
Design challenge unique to commercial trucking
The LECM had to work equally well for a driver in Phoenix at 110°F and a driver parked in Minnesota at -20°F, often controlling systems the driver can't physically reach from the cab seat. Every control had to be operable by touch with work gloves on a constraint that eliminated most standard touch interaction patterns and required larger, more distinctly spaced targets than any consumer product equivalent.
04 - Process
From sketch to
production hardware to Functional Specs
The DECM and LECM projects are the clearest example of end-to-end hardware-software design delivery in this project — from modular architecture ideation through vendor-ready pixel implementation.
Phase 01 — Architecture & Ideation
Setting a modular layout with room to evolve
I began by establishing a modular architecture for both the Driving and Living Environment Control Modules, anchored in feature requirements gathered from Product Planners and Feature Leaders. Rather than designing a single fixed layout, I produced multiple layout iterations, giving the cross-functional team structured options to evaluate against ergonomic, engineering, and brand constraints.
Early modular layout exploration multiple architecture options for feature placement across both control modules
Final layout selected after iterative review with engineers and feature product owners the version that went to production
Design decision: Why modular architecture first ?!
Starting with modular blocks rather than finished screens meant the layout could adapt when feature requirements changed mid-development, which they always do in complex vehicle programs. It also gave Industrial Designers a structured handshake point for physical component alignment.
Phase 02 - Logic & Engineering Collaboration
Building an interaction logic that engineers could build from
Using Balsamiq, I collaborated directly with software engineers to define the logic flows that mapped physical controls to digital outputs. This wasn't visual design; it was functional specification: how a button press changes a system state, how states cascade across the HMI, how the DECM and LECM interact when a driver switches contexts.
Early modular layout exploration — multiple architecture options for feature placement across both control modules
My contribution at this stage
I owned the bridge between design intent and engineering spec. The Balsamiq diagrams weren't wireframes for users they were precise functional specifications for developers building embedded software where there's no iterating after the firmware is flashed.
Phase 03 - Pixel Implementation & Vendor Delivery
Pixel-perfect execution with an external vendor
The final graphical elements and interaction flows were implemented to pixel-perfect specification, then handed off to an external vendor for multi-brand production implementation. I maintained quality through the vendor relationship reviewing builds, resolving visual discrepancies, and ensuring the interaction logic held across both Volvo and Mack brand implementations was consistent across both Volvo and Mack
Driving Environment Control Module — final digital interface
DECM — production hardware with integrated software
UI prototype of vent airflow interaction — used to validate interaction logic before embedded implementation
