Beyond the Wheel: 42dot Webinar Insights

The automotive industry is experiencing a design revolution. As vehicles transform from simple transportation into intelligent, connected ecosystems, designers face unprecedented challenges and exciting opportunities.

Hosted by Protopie's Senior Customer Success Manager Adrienne Ambrose, the September 9th event featured compelling presentations from Chris Jacobs of 42dot and Protopie's own Eric Lee, followed by an insightful panel discussion with Joel Carrillo.

Chris Jacobs and the Power of Multimodal Design

Chris Jacobs, Principal Product Designer at 42dot (Hyundai Motors' software-defined vehicle arm), opened the session by painting a vision of automotive's AI-powered future. He introduced the concept of Ambient AI, an intelligent system that transcends traditional voice assistants by understanding user intent and environmental context.

"Imagine a car that knows you're cold and turns on the heat, or one that sees you walking up with a box and automatically opens the trunk," Jacobs explained. This seamless, intuitive interaction represents the next frontier in automotive UX design.

But perhaps the most compelling part of Jacobs' presentation was his real-world success story from Rivian. Faced with the challenge of prototyping a steering wheel featuring two unique rollers with haptic feedback, his team turned to an innovative solution: Protopie Connect linked to Arduino-powered motors.

This wasn't just a proof-of-concept demo. The team created a sophisticated system where haptic feedback was directly synchronized with on-screen visuals, allowing designers to "tune how things would feel" in real-time. The prototype was so effective that the underlying code made it into the final production vehicle, a testament to the power of high-fidelity prototyping.

"This allowed us to create a truly 'one-to-one' experience, where the tactile feedback and visual interface were perfectly synchronized," Jacobs noted, emphasizing how this approach enabled designers to work independently without constantly relying on developers.

Eric Lee's Live Demos: The Protopie Ecosystem in Action

Protopie's Creative Technologist Eric Lee followed with a series of impressive live demonstrations showcasing the Protopie ecosystem: Studio, Player, Cloud, and Connect working in harmony to extend prototyping "beyond just your digital screens."

The demonstrations progressed from simple to advanced interactions:

• Basic Cross-Device Communication: A simple prototype showing how turning a simulated wheel on one screen could control a pointer on another, illustrating fundamental multi-device interaction principles.
• Multi-Screen Vehicle Experience: A sophisticated prototype involving a mobile phone, heads-up display (HUD), and tablet panel. This demo brilliantly demonstrated how a single controller could orchestrate multiple interactions, from unlocking the car and simulating acceleration to managing music playback and responding to voice commands.
• AI-Powered Vehicle Diagnostics Dashboard: The demo's highlight was a prototype linked to the ChatGPT API, offering real-time car advice from simulated data. When coolant was "low," the AI issued verbal and text warnings, explaining the problem and suggesting actions, demonstrating the potential of intelligent, connected systems.

Panel Insights: Industry Challenges and Future Opportunities

The panel discussion provided crucial context on current industry pain points and emerging solutions:

The Prototyping Challenge

Joel Carrillo highlighted a fundamental problem facing design teams: most traditional prototyping tools simply can't handle the complexity of modern multimodal experiences. "They just can't do voice, touch, haptics, sensors, cross-device interaction," he explained. "The moment you move beyond simple screens, they break."

This limitation forces teams into creating "neat linear demos that only work if the user follows a script", but as Carrillo noted, "users don't really follow scripts." When they deviate, prototypes fail, leaving teams without crucial insights into real-world usage patterns.

Automotive's Broader Impact

The panelists explored how automotive UX principles apply across industries. Automotive design's focus on complex, interconnected systems operating in high-stakes environments offers valuable lessons for sectors like healthcare, aviation, and IoT development.

Chris Jacobs added an often-overlooked perspective: automotive design teaches designers to handle diverse screen sizes and interaction challenges in dynamic environments. "We have screens that look like this, screens that look like this," he gestured, describing the variety of display formats automotive designers must master, from ultra-wide dashboards to narrow vertical panels.

The Power of Prototyping for Stakeholder Buy-In

One of the session's most practical insights came from Jacobs' emphasis on prototyping as a tool for "selling and convincing" stakeholders. He shared another success story where a high-fidelity prototype of a steering wheel with integrated lighting alerts convinced Rivian's CEO to approve the design immediately.

"Prototyping is key to selling ideas," Jacobs stressed. "But it's equally important for discovering what doesn't work, and that's the safest way to find out."

The AI Revolution in Design

A recurring theme throughout the webinar was the transformative impact of AI on the design process. Jacobs, who describes himself as a "self-proclaimed vibe coder," spoke passionately about how AI tools have revolutionized his workflow:

"To be able to vibe code and create really sophisticated prototypes, to create APIs, to create games, anything, has opened my world up in a huge way," he shared. His team even developed an internal tool for generating fake data (album art, restaurant information, reviews) to avoid copyright issues during prototyping.

This democratization of technical capabilities is changing the design landscape. "People ask me, aren't you putting developers out of a job?" Jacobs noted. "No, because I wouldn't have asked them for help anyway. They're busy, and we don't have an FTE for that. It just allows me to learn and play and bring ideas to the table faster."

Key Takeaways for Design Teams

The webinar revealed several crucial insights for design teams across industries:

1. Invest in High-Fidelity Prototyping: The gap between simple mockups and production-ready experiences is too large. Tools that can handle multimodal interactions are essential for modern product development.
2. Think Beyond Single Screens: Connected experiences require prototypes that can simulate real cross-device interactions and dynamic, context-aware behaviors.
3. Embrace AI as a Design Accelerator: AI tools aren't replacing designers; they're amplifying their capabilities and enabling rapid iteration on complex ideas.
4. Test Early, Test Often: Finding out what doesn't work is as valuable as discovering what does. Prototyping provides the safest, most cost-effective way to uncover issues before production.
5. Design for Dynamic Environments: Whether it's a moving vehicle or a busy hospital, modern interfaces must work effectively under pressure and in changing contexts.

As we move toward a more connected world, lessons from automotive UX, focusing on multimodal interactions, safety, and integration, will be relevant across digital experiences. The tools and techniques in this webinar go beyond automotive innovation, offering a glimpse into the future of human-computer interaction.

For immediate questions about implementing multimodal prototyping in your organization, reach out to our team for a personalized demo session.