Car interfaces keep gaining features, but experience gets lost in complexity. With River, we stripped that back: only surface what the driver needs, when they need it.
We wanted the HMI to belong to the car, not sit on top. So we designed both as one system: car, interior, cluster, main display, app.
Rive was key to bringing the whole system to life. We used joysticks and blend states to animate the cluster gauges, solos to play back a pre-rendered Blender navigation scene on the central display, and state machine inputs to bring the whole prototype to life.
We then built a companion app and plugged it into a manufacturer's API to test against real vehicle data. The app works like a key: gives you access and gets out of the way. Just the right function at the right moment.
The blend states for the gauges are a smart use of Rive. Most HMI concepts treat the cluster and infotainment as separate worlds, nice to see them designed as one system.
"One ecosystem where every screen earns its place" — what a line. The Rive state machine + Blender pre-render combo is so smart for a realistic HMI prototype. This is the standard for vehicle UX work!
This is great work Pawel. Stripping things back is always harder than adding more, especially when you’re dealing with multiple surfaces like this. Designing it as one system instead of separate touchpoints makes a big difference. It feels more intentional, less like a collection of features.
The orange-and-black system has real presence, and the mobile frames show the hierarchy holding together rather than just shrinking. The clear CTA placement is a smart counterweight to the oversized hero type.
Whenever I get time, I like to do mockups to keep my creativity sharp. In this case, nature backgrounds were my inspiration to showcase all four seasons.
Long before Apple began using them, Windows offered a range of wallpapers that brought beautiful scenes from around the world to their user's desktop.
Here's some I felt best captured the essence of each season.