Designing the Digital Cockpit of a New Truck Generation
3 min read · 677 words
The Challenge
When MAN Truck & Bus SE began developing its 2020 truck generation, the company faced a problem that went far beyond visual design. The entire driver's workplace needed to be rebuilt for the digital age — from the instrument cluster a driver reads hundreds of times a day, to the logic governing how advanced driver-assistance systems communicate with the person behind the wheel, to the way a 40-tonne vehicle tells its driver that something has gone wrong. Each of these systems was interconnected, each touched a different part of the organisation, and each needed to speak a coherent design language across the finished cab.
The scale of coordination involved was substantial. Software teams, function development, sales, and multiple external suppliers all had a stake in how these interfaces behaved. Without a central UX authority to align concept decisions across every workstream, the risk was a cockpit assembled from individually reasonable components that never quite formed a unified whole — a problem that professional drivers, who spend entire careers inside these vehicles, would notice immediately.
The technical stakes were equally high. ADAS and autonomous-driving interfaces are not merely a matter of aesthetics; they govern how clearly a driver understands what the vehicle is doing on their behalf, and when they need to take back control. Getting that communication wrong has consequences that reach well beyond user experience.
The Approach
Taking on the role of cross-series UX lead from 2017 to 2022, the work began at the level of information architecture — establishing what the driver needs to know, in what priority, and at what moment. State diagrams mapped every condition the cluster and ADAS interface would need to represent, grounding subsequent design decisions in behaviour rather than appearance.
The deliberate choice to anchor every output in supplier-ready specification shaped the entire process. Design decisions were documented not as mood boards or loose guidelines but as precise, implementable references — because the people who would build these systems were external suppliers who needed unambiguous answers, not design intent left open to interpretation. This meant anticipating implementation questions before they arrived and making those calls explicitly at the concept stage.
Coordination across the organisation was treated as a core deliverable, not an administrative overhead. Regular alignment with software development, management, function development, and sales ensured that design decisions reflected technical constraints and business requirements from the start, reducing the costly rework that comes from designing in isolation and reconciling later.
The Solution
The work produced three interconnected deliverables that together defined the digital driver experience for the 2020 MAN truck generation:
- Instrument cluster concept — information architecture, visual hierarchy, and interaction states for the primary display the driver references throughout every journey.
- ADAS and autonomous-driving HMI — a structured communication framework defining how the vehicle signals its current level of automation, transitions between states, and prompts driver re-engagement when required.
- Vehicle error communication — a coherent system for surfacing fault information, prioritised and structured so that drivers receive what they need to act on without being overwhelmed by technical noise.
All three systems were developed from initial concept through to supplier-ready specification, giving the manufacturing partners the clarity needed to build accurately to the design intent.
The Results
The digital cockpit shipped as part of the new MAN truck generation launched in 2020 — a vehicle platform now in use across European roads. The work earned the Red Dot Design Award, one of the most recognised marks of design quality in the industry, reflecting the standard achieved across both the visual and functional dimensions of the cockpit.
Beyond the award, the outcome that matters most in this domain is coherence. A truck driver's workplace is a high-stakes environment; the interfaces there must work as a system, not a collection of screens. The approach of grounding every decision in information architecture, documenting to supplier-ready precision, and aligning continuously across the organisation produced a cockpit that passed the test that counts — it shipped, complete and consistent, into production.