BooksDigital

Ustwo Auto uncovers how driverless cars should be designed

Ustwo Auto, the automobile-focused branch of renowned digital and design agency Ustwo has just released the world’s first book on UX design for driverless cars, Humanising Autonomy: Where Are We Going?

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Colourful illustration of a playful black bee-like character surrounded by creative objects on a fluffy white cloud with turquoise outlines against a light blue background

The tome explores the future of autonomy, discussing the importance of people-centric designs in making this exciting leap actually work. "At present, there’s too much focus on the technologies that enable it and not the human factors that will govern take-up," says the agency.

To create the book, Ustwo worked with 20 artists including Muxxi, BLND, SuperNova, Scott Park and Peter Fowler, commissioning them to draw their perfect self-driving car. The results are predictably bonkers: who wouldn't want to drive around in a massive fairground-like vehicle, or a cute fluffy cloud?

As well as arguing the importance of placing people at the heart of future auto design, the book's chapters cover issues including how we might hail the taxis of the future, pedestrian safety, and people's broader mobility wants and needs. You can watch a little overview of what the book's all about in the video below.

TRAILER Humanising Autonomy: Where Are We Going? from ustwo on Vimeo.

Bright lime green book cover titled "Humanising Autonomy: Where Are We Going?" by Ustwo Auto, featuring a simple black and white illustration of a stylised autonomous vehicle in the top right corner
Infographic from Ustwo Auto's Humanising Autonomy book showing a conversation about driving safety, featuring a car image, a man's portrait, and dotted lines connecting to explanatory text boxes with numbered points
Overhead view of multiple yellow and black NYC taxi cabs driving on a city street with road markings
Illustrated whimsical driverless car concepts including a fluffy cloud car, fairground vehicle, office car and high cafe tea car, each labelled with handwritten annotations on a dark blue background
Six imaginative autonomous vehicle designs numbered 1-6, including a colourful stacked structure, red spiral tower car, globe terrarium pod, dark tanker vehicle, yellow and purple robot car and white police car, on a turquoise background
A self-driving car navigates a minimalist urban street environment with traffic lights and buildings in Ustwo Auto's visualisation of autonomous vehicle design
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