Casper Kessels

My article is live and I'm quite proud of this one! Over the last weeks I have been playing with a rotary dial with an embedded display to try designing better in-car climate controls. Physical interfaces are much harder but really fun to bring to life! www.theturnsignalblog.com/the-subtle-a...

Here's what we've been up to these past months! A whole new design language for Rivian, across the vehicles, web, mobile, and even down to our internal tools. We put together a little something to celebrate the hard work that went into every last pixel.

AGI is here

Went for a ride to get my mind off work and… oh, hello 😍

I get a lot of designers reaching out to me curious about what it's like to work in the car industry, and how to get there. So I wrote down all of my advice: www.theturnsignalblog.com/how-to-becom...

Claude one shotted the migration from Gatsby to Astro of my blog, zero mistakes. Threw in a little redesign for the fun of it! www.theturnsignalblog.com

Two months at Rivian and it already feels like so much longer. R2 is going to be a special car, so much exciting stuff in the works!

I've joined Rivian! I'll be working as Lead Designer focused on Autonomy and I couldn't be more excited to help shape the future of driving! Just arrived in the Bay Area so say hi if you're around!

3 years ago, I didn't see a single BYD in Brazil. Now they're everywhere. BYD uses Android without Google services, and interestingly, every Uber driver I've talked to has been to "a guy" who unlocked the system to sideload Waze and other apps instead of using CarPlay or AA.

I salute the gentleman who is keeping his 164 alive in Brazil

A simulator study measuring cognitive load does not say much about safety. It’s super hard and expensive to actually study this, and explaining why is difficult because people have strong feelings about it. Touch screens probably impact safety but there is no good research yet about it.

Yesterday, I noticed a table view with a hover highlight that just felt "flickery." Sure, it worked. It's even what we expect. But inspired by Amber Case and her "Calm Technology" manifesto, I wondered if there was a way to make this simple, even trivial, interaction feel more analogue and calm.

Having fun with shaders!

Language learning apps never properly match my level or pace, so I spent an evening vibe coding a Portuguese verb-conjugation trainer tailored to how I learn. Wild how fast you can build something that works better than existing apps.

60 euros for what?! Why stop there, why not make the seat optional as well! It's only a 70K car...

Today I learned that carmakers can’t agree on which way the seat icons should face. BMW is so confused they use both directions in the same system. Obviously the only correct way is how Tesla and Rivian do it!

You know you are in Germany when there are rules on how to hang towels

The crowd favorite

My experiment with generative UI continues, now adding theme customization!

I wrote something new! It’s a UI design history essay about Mac’s Control Panel, and it uses emulation in some… maybe new and maybe interesting ways? aresluna.org/frame-of-pre...

One step closer to a fully customizable instrument cluster with generative UI! ChatGPT now creates custom React components based on mock vehicle data. Next up having it create custom UI themes!

I’m playing around with the idea of using LLMs to create a fully personalized instrument cluster UI. Still totally insane to me that you can build the foundation for something like this in just 30 minutes with ChatGPT.

It’s wild seeing this car, and then working daily with European car brands that used to set the standard for innovation but are so stuck in outdated processes and risk-averse culture that they’ll never be able to adapt. youtu.be/9IMIDQOQzf4?...

It’s been crazy long since my last blog post but after I got the new Peugeot 3008 in the rental car lottery, I finally found the time to write down my thoughts. It’s super impressive in terms of hardware, but the software can’t quite match it. www.theturnsignalblog.com/a-ux-review-...

Some days I think the car industry is slowly starting to get software, then Nissan ships this. How?!

It genuinely baffles me how many carmakers mess up steering wheel controls. Obviously volume should be up/down, and playback left/right! Peugeot decided playback is up/down. And naturally, pressing up moves down your playlist to the next song.

Google finally created a Figma Design Kit for designing Android Auto/Automotive apps! www.figma.com/community/fi...

This is UI that shipped in a new car in 2025. Not sure what’s worse: that nobody noticed, or that nobody cared to fix it.

This has been my rental for the past week. The interior is full of quirky design decisions—some clever, some… less so. Will probably do a deep dive for my blog!

This is probably the biggest news from the CarPlay Ultra launch. Some carmakers who initially rejected CarPlay Ultra may now reconsider their decision

I’ve been designing my own map of a recent hike in Mapbox Studio. It’s been surprisingly fun to work with different geodata and tweak it endlessly. It turns the trip into something you can explore again, more than a static photo album.

What if iPadOS supported CarPlay? Great use for an old iPad!

Mapbox Studio is really underrated as a design tool, it's super fun to design custom maps and you can really tweak a lot!

I'm a sucker for smart solutions instead of focusing on what is trendy, and this post by @casperkessels.com hits a nerve: buff.ly/4i06eLQ Sometimes all touch is not the solution and we have to go back to old-school haptics, but with a new spin on it.

Automotive UI Prototyping with real car data In this blog post I'll explore how designers can use Figma, Protopie and RemotiveCloud to create Car HMI prototypes combining interactivity with real car data (live or pre-recorded).

These cars are just so cool but totally underpowered. If I would be stupid rich, I would commission a Singer-style restomod of one of these, but I'm inbetween an air-cooled 911 engine or a complete EV retrofit

When you see how large carmakers manage software projects, it really makes you wonder how they were ever able to build a car

This is absolutely outstanding and I can't wait to use it when I'm working in Seville next week

What if you could explore Wikipedia on a map? A little project I've been building with a friend over the past months! wikiexplore.org

BYD is going to put self-driving as a free feature in all cars. Starting with cars as cheap as 9000 euro! What we are seeing is what any futurist worth his salt was predicting all along: that self driving will become cheap and ubiquitous. www.straitstimes.com/business/com...

Really enjoying the 5x camera on iPhone 16 Pro, especially in combination with @halideapp.bsky.social & @usedarkroom.bsky.social