Specifying MAN's 2020 Digital Cockpit from Concept to Supplier-Ready Design
3 min read · 697 words
Led end-to-end UX specification of MAN Truck & Bus's 2020 digital cockpit, covering instrument cluster, ADAS, automated-driving HMI, and error communication across multiple truck series.
The Challenge
MAN Truck & Bus set out to fully digitise the driver's workplace for its 2020 truck generation — a generational shift that touched nearly every surface a driver interacts with. The brief was broad and technically demanding: instrument cluster, driver-assistance and automated-driving HMI, and vehicle error communication all needed to be redesigned from the ground up, simultaneously, across multiple truck series.
The scale of coordination was the core challenge. MAN's 2020 platform spans distinct vehicle lines with overlapping but not identical feature sets. Any design decision made for one series had downstream consequences for the others — in engineering, in supplier contracts, and in the experience drivers would actually encounter. There was no room for siloed work.
Beyond coordination, the content itself was genuinely complex. Automated driving and ADAS introduce interaction states that don't exist in conventional vehicles: transitions between automation levels, system takeover requests, attentional demands on a driver who may not be actively operating the truck. Getting those states right — and documented to a standard a hardware supplier could build from — required working simultaneously at the conceptual and the granular level.
Key Decisions
- 01
Own the end-to-end specification, not just the visuals
Early on, the scope was defined to include information architecture, state diagrams, and supplier-ready documentation — not only screen design. This decision ensured that every design choice was grounded in a functional logic that engineers and suppliers could trace and validate. The trade-off was a heavier workload and a longer arc before anything looked finished; the payoff was a specification that didn't require extensive re-interpretation by downstream teams.
- 02
Treat cross-series coordination as a design constraint, not an operational afterthought
Rather than designing a single "ideal" solution and then adapting it per series, the cross-series differences were mapped and held as live constraints throughout the process. This shaped decisions about which patterns could be shared, where series-specific variants were necessary, and how error communication could be standardised without ignoring genuine differences between vehicle configurations. The alternative — designing in isolation and reconciling later — would have produced inconsistencies that are expensive to resolve once suppliers are engaged.
- 03
Separate automation-level transitions as a distinct design domain
ADAS and automated-driving HMI were treated as a design domain in their own right, not as extensions of the conventional instrument cluster. This meant developing dedicated state diagrams for handover scenarios and attentional cues before touching layout or visual language. The reasoning: these states carry the highest safety consequence of anything in the cockpit, and getting the interaction logic wrong at the specification stage is far harder to fix than getting the visual treatment wrong. The trade-off was time invested in an abstract, less immediately visible phase of work.
- 04
Anchor error communication in driver comprehension, not system architecture
Vehicle error communication was structured around how drivers understand and respond to faults — severity, urgency, required action — rather than mirroring the underlying electronic architecture of the vehicle. This required pushing back on technically accurate but driver-unfacing classification schemes. The benefit was a communication system coherent enough to be learned and trusted; the cost was additional negotiation with engineering stakeholders who had existing frameworks they were invested in.
The Solution
The engagement delivered a complete digital cockpit specification for MAN's 2020 truck generation: instrument cluster concept, ADAS and automated-driving interaction model, and a unified vehicle error communication system. The work ran from initial information architecture through detailed state diagrams to supplier-ready specification documents, coordinated across the full breadth of the company. The scope was cross-series, covering multiple truck lines within the 2020 platform, with variants documented to the level of detail required for direct handoff to hardware and software suppliers.
The Results
The specification was delivered to a supplier-ready standard across the full 2020 platform — a complete, coherent digital cockpit for one of Europe's major commercial vehicle manufacturers, coordinated across multiple series and internal stakeholders.
The work was recognised with the Red Dot Design Award, one of the most widely cited honours in product and communication design, affirming the quality of the outcome at an industry level.