Designing the driving experience for assisted and automated driving
Volvo Cars is built on one core principle: safety. As cars become increasingly autonomous and electric, that principle is evolving with the technology.
I joined Volvo Cars as a Driving Experience Designer, working across advanced driver assistance systems and emerging technologies that allow the car to take on more of the driving. My focus was not simply on making these systems more capable, but on making them understandable, predictable, and trustworthy for the people using them.
The work spanned proactive safety, collision avoidance, driver monitoring, automated driving, 3D and surround-view experiences, head-up displays, and new concepts for the electric cars built on SPA2 and SPA3.
Safety isn't only about what happens when something goes wrong. It is about helping drivers before they reach that moment.
Traditional active safety often reacts to an event: a car drifts out of its lane, another vehicle appears in the blind spot, or a collision becomes imminent. The next generation of safety can go further by understanding the environment, the driver, and the situation around them, and acting earlier.
This changes the role of the car. Instead of simply reacting to danger, it can anticipate when help might be needed.
For me, this became one of the central design questions throughout the work: how can technology intervene early enough to make a difference, without making the driver feel like the system is constantly intervening?
Autonomy doesn't happen in one jump. The car gradually takes on more responsibility: first helping the driver, then assisting with parts of the drive, and eventually handling increasingly complex situations.
Each step introduces a new relationship between the driver and the car. The driver needs to understand what the system can do, what it cannot do, and when responsibility moves back to them. That makes autonomy as much a design challenge as a technology challenge.
The goal isn't to make the driver disappear from the experience. It is to create a clear partnership between human and machine, one that can evolve as the technology becomes more capable.
Every advanced driving function starts with perception. Cameras, radar, ultrasonic sensors, and other sensing technologies give the car an increasingly detailed understanding of the world around it. Interior sensing adds another dimension: understanding the person behind the wheel.
For a designer, this creates a new design material. The car can see things the driver cannot. It can detect patterns, predict situations, and understand the state of the vehicle and its surroundings.
But the driver doesn't need to see everything the car knows. The challenge is deciding what matters to the driver, when it matters, and how much of that intelligence should become part of the experience.
As the car becomes more capable, the number of things it can do, and the number of states it can be in, also grows. Navi Pilot Assist brought this challenge into focus.
When the car can assist with highway driving, manage lane changes, understand its surroundings, and take on more of the driving task, the driver needs to understand the system almost without thinking about it.
What is the car doing right now?
What does it see?
What is it about to do?
And most importantly: what does it still need from me?
I worked on the experience around these states and transitions, exploring how to make increasingly complex assistance feel clear and predictable rather than technical or overwhelming. The goal was not to expose the complexity of the system. It was to make the complexity disappear for the driver.
Some of the most important safety experiences happen in fractions of a second. I worked across functions including Lane Keeping Aid, Forward Collision Warning, Blind Spot Information, Safe Exit, and other collision-avoidance experiences.
The underlying design problem is surprisingly consistent: the car may understand a risk before the driver does, but communicating that risk at the right moment is critical.
Too little information and the driver may miss it.
Too much and the system becomes noise.
Too early and it may be ignored.
Too late and it may not help.
The work was about finding the right combination of visual, auditory, and haptic communication, and making sure the response matched the urgency of the situation.
Product video by Volvo Cars, shown here for context. Watch on YouTube
The car can understand more than what is happening outside. Driver Monitoring Systems introduce another layer of awareness: is the driver looking at the road, paying attention, and still able to take control when needed?
But monitoring creates its own design problem. A system that reacts to everything can quickly become annoying. A driver who learns to ignore the system is not safer because of it.
So the question becomes less about what the car can detect and more about when detection should become an interaction. The best intervention is often the one the driver barely notices, but responds to exactly when it matters.
Volvo's approach to driving experience is deliberately different from many other car brands. Most technology tries to capture attention. In a car, attention belongs on the road.
That means every piece of information has to justify its presence. Sometimes the right design decision is to show something. Sometimes it is to wait. Sometimes it is to say nothing at all.
This principle influenced everything from driver notifications and system states to the design of displays, alerts, and interactions. The goal isn't to make the car more engaging. It's to make driving safer while keeping the driver's attention where it belongs. That requires restraint.
As assistance becomes more advanced, trust becomes increasingly important. A driver needs to understand not only what the car is doing, but why they can trust it to do it.
I helped the team that explored 3D environments and surround-view experiences as a way of making the car's understanding of its surroundings more visible. Showing the environment around the vehicle can communicate something that a warning alone cannot: what the system has detected, what it is tracking, and how it understands the space around the car.
The visualization becomes more than an interface. It becomes a way of building a mental model of the system.
Much of this work spanned SPA2 and SPA3, including electric models such as the EX90 and EX60. These platforms represent a shift toward cars that are increasingly software-defined, connected, and sensor-rich.
My role was to work between what the technology could do and what the driver needed to experience. I led and contributed to work across advanced driver assistance, safety concepts, head-up displays, 3D and surround-view experiences, and emerging driving technologies.
Working closely with engineering, R&D, research, and the Volvo Cars Safety Centre, we explored and prototyped new possibilities, turning complex technical capabilities into experiences that drivers could understand and trust.
The challenge was not only designing what the car can do today, but what it can become tomorrow.
Car design is unlike most of the product design work I've done. In a digital product, a bad interaction might frustrate someone or make them abandon a task. In a car, you are designing moments that happen at speed, in an unpredictable physical environment, sometimes at the exact moment when someone's life depends on the system behaving as expected.
That changes the level of attention. It changes how decisions are made, how much they are challenged, how much they are tested, and how closely designers need to work with engineers and safety researchers. The process is deliberately rigorous, and often slower, because the consequences demand it.
It has made me a more careful designer. Not only in how I design interactions, but in how I think about responsibility.
Product video by Volvo Cars, shown here for context. Watch on YouTube
As a Driving Experience Designer, I worked across advanced driver assistance and emerging automated driving experiences, helping translate complex technical capabilities into clear and human-centered interactions.
My work included:
Advanced driver assistance and proactive safety
Navi Pilot Assist and automated driving experiences
Collision avoidance and driver alerts
Driver Monitoring Systems
3D environment and surround-view concepts
Head-up display and augmented-reality display concepts
Safety concepts and future driving experiences
Prototyping and concept development
Cross-functional collaboration with engineering, safety, and R&D teams
The work was less about designing individual features in isolation and more about shaping how the different parts come together to create a coherent relationship between the driver and the car.
Volvo Cars - Driving Experience Design
Working closely with engineering, R&D, research, and the Volvo Cars Safety Centre.