The automotive industry has yet to build a holistic user centred offering. One that takes advantage of the unique interactions, environments and context of the vehicle. Over the past 2 years we have been embedded within Ford’s Detroit Development Team, conceptualising, building & testing what we call Autonomous Vehicle Simulator (AVS) to realise their future car experience. Created in response to intensive global research, it identified the brand experiences people want when they no longer need to drive.

AVS was designed from the inside-out: a fully holistic, integrated physical and digital experience. Bringing together Ford’s entire engineering and brand teams to perform hundreds of experiential trials, it was unveiled in a specially built 3000 square foot exhibition space within the Piquette Factory, Detroit, birthplace of the Model-T.

AVS is a transformational space, placing users at the centre of the experience. We modelled a fully immersive programmable environment digitally projected 360° around a fully automated in-vehicle experience. The two spaces were synchronised, prompting real-time interaction with the surrounding environment, allowing users to fully experience the future of travel and enabling true behavioural analysis.

The environment responded to user commands and vice versa allowing people to inhabit a vehicle five years in the future. We utilised transparent displays to augment the world outside, surfacing contextually relevant content. Interactive scenarios such as booking tickets to an art house movie or taking the longer route to your destination to stop and enjoy a special live event in the city we fully realised in real time. Here we could study detailed interaction models though a fully integrated system of moving image, mobile interactions, voice control, and capacitive touch interfaces.