tesla UI

Tesla has hired a new executive, long time video game engineer Scott Sims from Microsoft, to lead user interface engineering as the automaker’s new ‘Director of UI Engineering’.

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The user interface inside Tesla’s vehicles has been stagnant over the past 6 months or so as the company has been focusing on the second generation Autopilot and the Model 3.

But CEO Elon Musk took to Twitter this week to give owners some tips and to take a few suggestions to improve the UI for media, voice commands, and navigation.

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Tesla’s user interface is quite unique in the auto industry. Most of the controls are activated through the 17-in touchscreen, which as often been compared to an iPad, so it wasn’t too surprising when Tesla hired a senior designer from Apple to lead its user interface design.

Brennan Boblett was working on the design team of the iTunes Store when he joined Tesla back in 2010 to “create the most visually stunning and exciting large screen interface the automotive world has ever seen”, as he described at the time.

He worked under Tesla’s Chief Designer, Franz von Holzhausen, but as the company grew, he was quickly promoted and ended up managing both the UI and UX teams in 2012. Boblett stayed with Tesla for over 5 years and led the user experience development of the Model S, Model X and even the early work of the Model 3.

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