Touchscreens are a window into a hell of our own making

At some point in the recent past, someone, somewhere, was designing the interiors for a new car, and asked themselves a question. That question was: ‘Would it be possible for me to turn this vehicle into a mobile karaoke lounge’. The answer, apparently, was yes.

Being able to sing karaoke from the passenger seat of a moving vehicle naturally made my mind wander to Steven Spielberg’s Jurassic Park. Dr Ian Malcolm, portrayed by Jeff Goldblum, informs the assembled that the dinosaur crafting scientists ‘were so preoccupied with whether they could, they didn’t stop to think if they should’. In the same film, Dr Malcolm/Goldblum also says that ‘Life will find a way’; However, I can guarantee you it won’t if my passenger starts belting out a tuneless cover of Madonna’s Like a Virgin.

Something has gone wrong. A cursory glance at most modern car interiors is a gaze into the panopticon. A recent trip in a friend’s new estate involved dealing with three screens, a continuous brushstroke of soulless interface splashed across the dashboard. Less car, more the bridge of the USS Enterprise on wheels, a command centre from where the sensation of driving can be deadened and destroyed, all in the name of whichever design ethos is currently the most fashionable.

De-cluttering is a useful tool after a divorce, but it has no place in the front seat of a car, which is a machine, and therefore deserves lots of buttons and switches to make it work. You wouldn’t look at an organ and complain that it had too many keys.

We are left with plain spaces, perforated only with screens which are windows to a hell of our own making. Colour palettes have been left on the cutting room floor, as uninspiring swatches of silver and grey run riot (at least, as riotous as the colour grey can be). If you want to open the glovebox, you have to visit a sub-menu of a sub-menu, because someone decided a simple switch or handle ruined the aesthetic. Gone are the knobs that control the temperature, which you can feel and touch and use without taking your eyes off the road. We are drawn back to the screen, like a neglected child being force fed dopamine hits.

What is the purpose of all of this? Who is it all for? It doesn't feel like it's for me or anyone else. Perhaps I am woefully out of touch, akin to the art critics who first laid eyes on the works of Monet at the Paris Salon and practically fainted in horror at his rushed strokes and waterlilies.

But these decisions are just that. When something must be new, something must be innovated for the sake of being innovative. But there is still a place for tradition: take the fabulous interiors of Bentley, Aston Martin and Rolls-Royce as an example. All three provide spaces that have the things you need, but rooted in an organic, well designed and tactile environment. They are well thought out and elegant.

There is a place for modernity too. The Fiat Grande Panda’s recent re-launch saw an interior garnished with delightful detail that left you with no doubt as to the car’s contemporary nature. It doesn’t take much either. Mini made their screen a circle instead of a square, and immediately created an interior worthy of an icon. The widely lambasted Ferrari Luce can at least claim that its interiors were well received, full as they are of switches and a coherent style.

The job of a designer, interior or otherwise, is to design, and I am sure that those responsible for creating these over-screened minimalist spaces do their best to provide the best product that they possibly can. But all too often it feels like things are being designed to impress other designers, rather than create value and emotion for the customers.

Driving used to be something that used all five senses. We could smell and taste petrol, feel the road through the wheel and engage with the tactile surfaces of a well-made interior. We could hear the engine and the wind and the tyres, and we could see it all working together in concert to make a journey all the more bearable.

Who is so determined to seal us away inside a stifling tomb? There is no touch, no taste, no feel. You will be comfortable, yes, as you silently glide down the motorway in your 2.5 tonne device, but you will not feel a part of it. You can keep your karaoke and Apple CarPlay. What I crave is connection.