Dashboards provide drivers with accessible controls and the required instruments in order to successfully drive a vehicle and ensure that it is safe to operate on public roads. While dashboards remain essential to operate vehicles, they are often an unnoticed facet of a vehicles interior, which was the original designers intention. Previously, these interactions were rather subconscious through the use of tactile buttons, rotating dials, and physical gauges. Nowadays, screens have afforded these interactions with controls to become digital and increasingly conscious for drivers to operate.

 

Through 74 years and 14 generations of F-Series, viewers can understand the increasingly complex design of vehicle dashboards. This design journey takes us from the simple gauges in the 1952 F-1 to the multitude of menu screens in the 2022 F-150 Lightning. If screens are well designed user interfaces, they can offer drivers a wealth of information and easily accessible controls. If screens are poorly designed, they can be distracting to drivers and a potential safety risk for others on the road.

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Driving a vehicle is often the most dangerous part of one's day, safety is and should always be the first factor when it comes to any aspect of a vehicles design. Analog controls of the past never moved positions or disappeared entirely, the same can not always be said for digital controls. Through a career in automotive user experience design, I strive to understand how the past has influenced the present and why the future doesn't have to be entirely digital.