Matt Mcelvogue, VP at Teague on Human-Centered Design

Matt McElvogue, VP at Teague, talks about Teague's human-centered design. We explore how building early aligns design, engineering, and business, and why full-scale prototypes beat slide decks. From accessible aircraft cabins to friendlier autonomous shuttles, we show how human-centered design meets hard constraints while accounting for many factors, such as aesthetics and functionality, that design engineers may not consider.

• Teague’s “thinking through making” philosophy across aerospace, automotive and defense
• Tooling choices from Rhino and SolisWorks to CATIA for aerospace rigor
• Full-scale cabin mockups and high-fidelity showpieces that survive travel
• Aligning desirability with feasibility in regulated environments
• Accessibility in aviation using sensors and smart wayfinding
• Factory-floor innovation with a microphone-based wire seating tool
• Where Teague complements in‑house prototype shops
• Autonomy, safety, public trust and external vehicle communication
• A friendly, bidirectional autonomous school shuttle concept
• Faster visualization, humanoid robots and emergent AI-driven design

Transcript

Teague’s Century Of Making

Roopinder 0:06

Hello and welcome to FoDES, the Future of Design and Engineering Software Podcast. My name is Roopinder Tara. On the show, we will have guests that will discuss tools and technology that engineers will find interesting and useful. Hi, Matt.

Matt 0:21

Hey Roopinder.

Roopinder 0:22

Matt. Matt, thanks for joining us. Matt Mcelvogue. Am I saying that correctly? You got it correct, yeah. All right, Matt, I'll I'll let me welcome you to the show.

Matt 0:33

Thank you.

Roopinder 0:34

Great to have you with us. I see that you are the VP of design at Teague. And Teague is celebrating its 100 years of the business being, looks like, correct me if I'm wrong, design and manufacture full prototype, working prototypes for so many things. Space stations, aircraft, automobiles. Am I right so far?

Matt’s Path From Software To Systems

Matt 0:56

We cover um a lot of different industries. But yeah, we we think of ourselves as a human-centered design company, but we have that capability to build things, make them real, test them. And we have an internal philosophy that we sometimes talk about externally, uh, which is thinking through making. So we like to build whatever we're designing just to mitigate risk on behalf of our clients, right? And make sure that we're making the right decisions before we get into tooling and handing off to manufacturing and all that good stuff.

Roopinder 1:25

Tell me a little bit more about yourself, Matt. You looks like you got a degree in design at the University of Cincinnati.

Matt 1:33

Yep.

Roopinder 1:34

Seems like you left there as soon as you could.

Matt 1:38

Um yeah, I grew up in the UK and then uh moved to the states really just for opportunity and different schools and whatnot. And then um went to the design school in Cincinnati, quite a good design school. Uh there for digital design, which is a bit of an old term now, really. Um, today that would be product design, is what they would call that, or something slightly different in from industrial design, perhaps? Well, the industrial design is definitely a little bit of it, but that was still seen as a separate, separate thing. So I was more on the software side as I was coming up, right? So um worked a lot more on applications, enterprise software, sort of complicated systems work on the on the enterprise side, and then uh a lot of consumer stuff. So cut my teeth on a lot of uh interface work for Xbox, Windows Phone did Xbox work, where it was kind of that era where every platform was integrating applications like apps. So help them create their human interface guideline, their Hig to bring on like Netflix and other properties onto their interaction model, which you know at the time that just wasn't a thing. So was helping with that with them and and other companies. Did a lot of research, global research, again, really to inform sort of like early digital assistance. So think like Siri, Cortana, that kind of thing, early, early flavors of AI. There were people were calling it AI back then, and I still feel like I'm telling people it's not really AI that you're talking about. But um went from there, joined uh joined Teague, and a Teague started to lead much more multidisciplinary teams, helped projects for new space stations, uh, autonomous vehicles, uh, done a lot of work in autonomy, often partnering very closely with engineers and developers, uh, technical folks on the on the client side, and internally at Teague, and then have kind of moved up from there. And now I run the the whole design group. So we have industrial designers, software folks, we have researcher strategists, we have engineers, and we have um visualizers and like technical build people that are that are always um kind of putting together new prototypes for clients. So that's me, a bit of my background.

Roopinder 3:56

And that you've been all about software and using software for design and and probably a little bit of manufacturing, but are we talking about designs? What kind of software are we talking about? What's your software of choice?

Tooling Across Industries

Matt 4:09

We're a consultancy, right? So we have to be a bit of a chameleon with our clients, but I'd say a fair bit of Rhino, a fair bit of SOLIDWORKS. There is some Fusion 360. There are some Fusion 360 users that do stuff just to kind of um uh build in the way that you end up building with that tool very quickly to get stuff done for quick 3D prints and and things like that, scrappy stuff. And then uh a lot of Katiya. So we use a lot of Katiya in all with all of our aerospace clients. So CATIA is kind of the mainstay for um for a lot of our aerospace work. Yes, it is. It's almost a requirement, isn't it?

Roopinder 4:44

And a lot of a lot of automotive companies are using CATIA as well for their uh what do they say, body and white, the exterior?

Matt 4:52

Yeah, on the automotive side, we're I'd say we're very far left on the schedule. We're kind of early concepting a lot of the time. So um normally a couple of years out of a program that may run then for four or five, six years. Um, so helping clients kind of think outside the box on on new stuff, new maybe um programs that are exploring what requirements they may want to set for a new vehicle. So the kind of things we're involved in there right now are it might be trying to align sort of what vehicles are gonna share the same uh wheelbase or chassis before they then get sort of styled and features get added by different teams so that they kind of show up different in the market, but it's kind of early, like, hey, which of these are actually gonna be built similarly to help us, not take a bath every time we're releasing a product and then kind of go from there. So it's a mixture of thinking far into the future, but then also thinking about feasibility today. And we also help them with defining um new requirements about like changing and shifting demographics in markets they already exist in or where they might go. So lately that's looked like doing um a lot of work for aging in place, right? And more elderly drivers as populations age around the world. So we've been doing a fair bit of that and kind of integration of new sensors, AI, different um sort of software and audio experiences and haptic experiences in the vehicle to help people uh kind of remain independent for longer. Um so that's that's been sort of what we've been doing there. But we end up we work so far left on that. It's kind of like dealer's choice software-wise, to bring it back to your question.

The Shop: From Foam To First Class

Roopinder 6:27

Yeah, yeah. Well, it's quite diverse here what the work you're doing, a lot of different industries, a lot of different products. Do you get your hands dirty with chips and some of us? Because I'm looking at this shop. I'm a uh amateur woodworkers, and I'm happy to have a little shop in my garage, you know, where I can make things. And I see your place, and I'm thinking, wow, that is a I'm just peeling over this shop. So I you find yourself in.

Matt 6:54

I have my own at-home uh wood shop as well. Build desks and actually my wife's like a essentially a farmer at this point, so we have a lot of animals. I feel like what I mainly do with my wood shop is uh fix fences and build fences, but that's that's a whole nother uh story. The shop at Teague is um yeah, we we have some really specialized equipment, right? So we have one of the larger like volumetric 3D foam cutters on the West Coast, I think. So we uh we do a lot of really big scale, uh not big scale in the sense that we do a lot of it, but very specialized full interiors for planes and things like this at a mix of fidelities. We're often working in on what we would call like a validation prototype. So we're building seats and things and architecture that's exploring what's possible. Maybe it's a rearrangement of amenities on a plane or a bus or a spaceship and kind of helping clients understand the art of the possible and then how they can integrate different equipment and new ideas from suppliers as well. So we often play that role of kind of integrator glue in making it kind of real enough that we can all walk around in it and give it a thumbs up if we want to kind of go to the next level of fidelity. So we're you know, I was in one on on um on uh last Friday, uh checking out a full-scale interior for a new first class experience for an Asian airline. And yeah, it's cool, it's a very exciting place to kind of hang out. We had um we had a mock-up for a company called Shield AI in there a couple of weeks ago, which is like a flying wing sort of stealth vehicle, and that was going through our paint booth and having all of the decals added to it. So there's always something exciting going on there. And actually, when I come in, if I don't really have like a reason to be in any one of the studios, like today all night, I'll kind of go and park in that studio just so that when I have breaks, I can go check out what's going on on the on the shop floor.

Roopinder 8:55

I am curious since you mentioned it that uh where do you live?

Matt 8:59

I live on an on an island outside of the city called Vashon Island. I don't know if you're familiar or not, but uh I live out there and have a five-acre property.

Roopinder 9:07

Where's Bainbridge? Bainbridge is a big island.

Matt 9:09

Yeah, Bainbridge is sort of straight west of the city.

unknown 9:12

Okay.

Matt 9:13

I'd like to say as someone that lives on a true island, it's not a true island. You can drive all the way around to it, even though it's yours is a real island. Yeah, I'm west of West Seattle, and it's a it's a real island. It kind of runs from uh West Seattle down to um Tacoma. So it's a skinny island, and uh and yeah, I live out there, and yeah, you gotta take a boat and everything. So very good.

Roopinder 9:34

And you have uh farm animals?

Matt 9:36

Yes, so we have cows and chickens and bees and soon to be uh sheep, and we have a a cut flower farm as well. So we have uh we have a large amount of like cut flowers. My wife does that and sells them to to um the florist for weddings and things like this.

Roopinder 9:55

Right, but back to work. So I noticed that uh you mentioned some of the uh projects you're working on. It looks like you worked on the Andreal the uh theory, and I'm looking at the pictures and my god, it looks like that thing would actually fly, but how close to real is this thing? It's uh beautiful.

Showpiece Prototypes With Engineering Rigor

Matt 10:15

Yeah, it's it's it's one-to-one in look. It is really not operational. We do that that's become kind of a growing thing for us. You know, it's not an area we have uh historically kind of competed in, like mock-ups that show up for show floors and whatnot. I think the way we stack up well there is our staff that go into those projects, they are technical designers, right? And they are, if they're not on a project like that, they are designing things and then building those things. So the beauty of a client coming to us when they really care about the fit and finish and the quality of their product, like Andoril does, they get a designer sensibility throughout that build project process to just make sure that the intent and sort of the design isn't compromised in any way. So we stack up well against the company that maybe just pure build. Um, these things are shipped for sometimes 20 plus countries a year, right? They go all over. They're real workhorses, they're premium investments uh when the companies make them, uh, not cheap. And what we bring is sort of a designer sensibility to the shipping and setup and teardown. And, you know, we make it as few tools as we can, we make it as simple to do as possible with two people. Um, so we really think through that process as part of um how we deliver those as well, because you know, they got to get put on the nose of a 747 or 777 and shipped around the world and set up again and not break and stuff like that. So often when we're getting brought in, they've had bad experiences with other groups and they're ready to kind of look at it more kind of holistically and and treat it like its own mini design project as well.

Roopinder 11:53

Right. Full fidelity, visual fidelity in that case. And I'm thinking part of the shape is somewhat uh sensitive because it's probably a stealth aircraft, right? So it is how did you get that shape? Did you have to scan it or were you supplied?

Matt 12:09

I mean we worked from the CAD with them, right? So um it and some clients won't deliver as quality a CAD as they did, right? And we really then have to kind of go back to the well and partner with their design and engineering team to make sure that that we're getting it there. Um, but with them, you know, we got good CAD from them, and then it's working with the different suppliers that are going to do the mold forming and things like that just to make sure that things stay accurate. So um, yeah, in that case, it's just kind of transferring what they have. But again, it's kind of important to have deft hands in that because you can see when there's an error as things get converted and you're handing things off to different vendors and whatnot. And um, and it's easy to slip up when you're doing that stuff. So we bring kind of a quality eye to all of that. And then there's other projects where you know we're defining things ourselves and going through our own design and engineering process and then building, and then you know, it's it's similar, but you know, we're the ones creating the cat and partnering with the engineers to make sure that it's gonna meet all the needs and whatnot.

Roopinder 13:11

So, did you meet uh did you meet Palmer Lucky?

Matt 13:14

I did not meet Palmer Lucky. I believe a couple of people have. We work very closely with Jen Bucci, who's very close to Palmer Lucky. Um of their design, so she's really our kind of core clan over there. But I've heard stories.

Thinking Through Making

Roopinder 13:28

Yes, as we as have we all. But uh what a character you forget about the show one sometime. But but yeah, what a so very very interesting subjects. Uh the whole idea, okay. When I go to the shop, even with a design, fully detailed design, I find I'm not working on the final design, I'm actually working on a prototype that I'm discovering things about the design I never would have discovered if I just went from E from the CAD drawings to manufacture. And of course, I'm in no position to change the design, but this is a actually seems to be a niche of T, right? Full scale mock-up. So you can do that discovery, right? That you can actually refine the design based on well, you're walking around in it, you're looking around.

Beyond Aesthetics: Feasibility And Regulation

Matt 14:18

I think two things come to mind when I think about that, right? It's one is thinking through making, so making as fast as possible in a design process. There may not be engineering involved yet, right? This may be a pre-engineering concept, or engineers are doing their own sort of feasibility work at that point that's very different than maybe what we're exploring on the sort of customer experience. Now, the first thing that comes to mind is like just making as quick as possible, right? Like if you stand something up, you learn quickly and you become you have to be deft at like picking the right fidelity for the right kind of uh inquiry you're looking to have around an artifact, right? So you don't want to make something extreme fidelity when you're still trying to think about like kind of large-scale swings in the architecture or something like that. So we we work a low fidelity as quick as possible, bring users and stakeholders through. I think that's critical as well, involving users in your process, whatever proxima approximation you can get of users. So that's kind of number one. I think the other one is alignment between design and engineering around sort of being uh um what I would say is like experience first versus thing first. Like it's very easy for groups to kind of like care about what they're measured on, right? So the stereotype, and often fairly true, is engineering is very feasibility focused, right? They're saying, hey, how is this gonna work? How am I actually gonna go get this built? How am I gonna tool for this? That kind of thing. Design, I think when they're living their stereotype, they're very desirability focused. They're, you know, how am I gonna make this an interesting experience? How am I gonna make it stand out in the market? That kind of thing. We often we say it, I keep saying I say it internally, but then I bring it up on podcasts. But it's we think of ourselves as blue-collar designers in this in the sense that we want to partner with all the constituents. We don't want to just kind of show you up and wow you with a thing that then is very hard for you to go build. So we work with engineers in this sort of early let's learn from prototype phase to align on, like I said, experience first. You know, that means aligning on the opportunity and the reason for making something, the need it's gonna serve, not starting with feasibility or aesthetics or a bunch of camps that maybe then aren't communicating or create kind of tension when it's not healthy on a project. So by aligning on like needs and building things early in partnership, we expose any tensions very early, is the is the ideal for us. I kind of ran with what you were saying there. Hopefully that's useful. No, that's it's very useful and very enlightening because you know, as an engineer, I I find if I make a design, I don't consider things that are have a how should I say, an aesthetic or visual effect a lot of times, because it it just doesn't come across in the even in a 3D design. Whereas if I after I make it, I can see, oh, this doesn't feel right, or this doesn't look right, or it looks bad from this angle, which I never looked at. All those things. How much of your work is would you consider is soft design? What I call soft design is like the aesthetic part of it, the uh visual or psychological aspects. It's always a critical component of what we create, but I'd say the actual work of getting there and then what you end up seeing on the website, it's much less that in reality, right? It's getting to a direction that we can agree on from like an opportunity point of view, right? Then it's kind of working back through feasibility. And I think one of Teague's special sources sauces is we we work in like highly regulated environments, right? So like materials really matter. Like one of the things working in the space industry that I kind of like stumbled into is you know, indigo dye off gases, like ever so slightly more than like other types of dyes that are preferred, which is going to run your charcoal filters out more quickly and things like this, right? So it's you know, we like to get that sort of direction set and align engineering stakeholders, everyone, on sort of like why we're driving towards an aesthetic or generally an idea. But then pretty quickly, I'd say the work becomes much more feasibility focused, even if it the end result is an aesthetic one. It's about making sure that it's manufacturable, maintainable, refreshable. You know, these all matter in the long run. So, you know, it's funny, we do a lot of work with product development with Boeing, like we're we are their product development kind of core partner, right? So we're always working out ahead on a mix of sort of skunkworky things or what the next plane might look like and refreshes to current planes, all in a product development sense. And one of the one of the things we've been working on a lot lately is accessibility. You talk about accessibility, going to the bathroom is a way bigger ordeal, right? So even knowing if there's a queue at a bathroom or if one's open and all that kind of thing can really impact a mobility impaired person, their decision around like choosing to go to the bathroom at that time, that kind of thing. When you think about you, you think about designing a feature that's like the bathrooms are available or not, it's like the most basic level of that is have a you could just have a map of a plane and know where the bathrooms are, right? If I add a sensor to the lock, all of a sudden I can tell you which ones are currently occupied. If I had a camera outside that's fish eye and sits in the roof, now I can tell you if there's a queue. And by the way, I can use that camera for knowing if there's any other loitering or if someone's standing up when seatbelts are on or which overhead bins have been closed, which normally indicates they're full, that kind of thing for ingress. So we often like coming up with that idea on what might be good for the user, but then breaking down sort of, hey, here's the sensors, connectivity, technical capability that's going to allow us to do that. And then we'll partner with them on like literally what can the wiring look like to support these things in a way that's going to improve on the way we've wired planes in the past. So it may look like a lot of what we do ends up being soft to use your language, but the work behind it is very technical most of the time.

Roopinder 20:35

It's more than skin deep. This is actually how parts might fit together in assembly. And notice the the wing came together on the end real uh precisely. And uh, so is that full fidelity as terms of the internal structure?

Human Factors And Accessibility In Aviation

Matt 20:51

The internal structure on that one is not full fidelity. It's just you, it's actually more about building an internal structure on that one that can facilitate teardown and shows. So that's it's funny you mentioned like the fit of the wing. They care about their product, right? And how their product looks and how it shows up. So it's one of the complaints they'd had with all the other build groups is they hadn't been able to achieve the part line right there, right? So we did spend a lot of time engineering an internal structure that would guarantee that we could do that and it would survive all of the teardown and and reset up that it has to go through, right? So, you know, we do it there. I mean, I think it's interesting you make you you make a comment on manufacturing. We help our deeper client relationships. We're very fortunate, you know, it's by dint of the good work we do. We have client relationships that are measured in 30, 40, up to 80 years with our longest lived clients, right? Um, and that's continuous relationship. And the reason we have that is the quality of work, but also how we can help them achieve their goals. So, our deeper client relationships, we do bring the human centered design process to manufacturing, right? So, you know, like I'll give you another example. We we have a a group that works on sort of automation kind of projects within manufacturing, but it's very, it's still a very design-centered approach. It's not going to like a Jacobs or someone big and being like, hey, can you build me a thing? It's it's starting from just small problems and trying to fix them and then scale them. We had a we had a problem on the manufacturing floor with this client where over the years the factory floor has gotten so noisy, it's hard to hear the very quiet click when a wire seats correctly, right? It's so you just can't hear it. And they were having problems with when they go to test things, wire connectivity not being kind of hooked up properly. So it was causing, and this went on for years, causing all this kind of like checks, and you have to go back through as a human. And then they were implementing a pull test, which actually has a negative effect of sometimes disconnecting a wire that is connected properly. So we experimented with them. Uh, we we looked at a camera-based solution that could see the wires come through the other side. We in the lab were getting pretty good results on that. So we decided to put it out there. The lighting and even people walking by was causing too much like intermittent, like light dark, light dark. So we were getting false positives and other problems. And we ended up creating a new version of an applicator that pushed the wire in, had a very small microphone at the end of it that would hear the click and then light up a green light. And it's a hundred percent, it works. So then we take that, we do some of the DFM, the design for manufacturing, hand off to one of their suppliers that works exclusively with them. So they're great at doing these bespoke things. Build a couple of hundred, went well, built a couple of thousand, going really well. So, you know, we do that kind of thing too, and it's it's all design, it's just not normally a place a company that calls themselves a design consultancy would go work, right? But we love to work on that kind of stuff.

Roopinder 23:52

Quite creative. I mean I dare say more creative than an ordinary engineering job for sure. Now, by the way, notice that you only when you mentioned where you were born did you even have a trace of a British accent. You must have come at a very early age.

Matt 24:08

Yeah, I came at a 14, 15. And then I um you know I went into high school and uh I I think it's if you're a social person, you kind of act you become a chameleon, right? So you kind of pick it up. I joke that if I go back and hang out with my cousins, it comes back, or if you have plant in me, it comes back as well.

Human-Centered Design On The Factory Floor

Roopinder 24:29

I had uh I also I came out of the UK when I was 10 and into America, and uh they called me London Bridges. I think they didn't have any other way to explain my funny, my funny voice, but I also lost the accent. I I wouldn't have picked it up with you either. It's been too long. When I was a practicing engineer, we had a prototype shop, and I would go in there. Sometimes I'd go in there with new designs and they would help me iron out all the dumb things that I put in the design, and they would help me, they say, Oh, you can manufacture them or have you thought of this, and I'd be like going up with a completely different design. Now, most companies, big companies, I imagine, also have the a prototype shop, right? Or a machine shop or small production or early design. Where does TEG fit into that? Because take seems to be paralleling that sort of arrangement, right? Or is it something do you find companies don't have your unique capabilities?

Matt 25:28

Not always. They don't always have it. Sometimes it's capacity, right? Like we're trusted hands because we're working with them in we have a broad offering, right? Like we really can go from research through to realization, which is not ultra common. They may be engaged with us on another part of the process, and then it's it's smarter for them to kind of continue with us through um kind of the whole way, right? On that project, just because handoffs are messy and lossy and all that kind of stuff. So sometimes it's that, but often they just don't have the exact capability in-house and they they come to us for it. It's not something they, you know, they're often large companies, right? Not companies that if they wanted to, they could go build it, but it's they trust us to kind of partner with them on it. And um, and that's that's sort of where it nets out, or it's you know, a slightly different capability or sensibility, you know, they they can do something, you know, some of our clients can do very rough and ready prototypes, but they can't do a higher fidelity one, right? Because it's different, different hand skills and and different kinds of sensibility. So depends is probably my response to kind of what you said, but we find that it's it's all good, right? If we're leaning in and trying to help, uh we find ways to work together.

Roopinder 26:44

You mentioned your work in uh in AI and uh automotive autonomous vehicles. And I saw on your site you're doing some work centered on pedestrian safety, which is very interesting. I'm sure you follow AVs and Roblo taxis. And here I'm in San Francisco. You had an unfortunate incident with a Waymo and a cat. Unfortunately, the Waymo ran over a cat, which it didn't see kind of under under vehicle sensors. None of the I don't think any vehicle really does except one. But I there's also been a case where a pedestrian was caught under a car in San Francisco. It was a cruise thing, right? But if your firm is is doing work on pedestrian safety, is that is that one of the things that's considered?

Where Teague Fits With In‑House Shops

Autonomy, Safety, And Public Trust

Matt 27:39

Like we've so we've run the gamut, right? Like we work on them in in sort of every sense from hardware to software, helping do research, sentiment, analysis of different business models beyond just robotaxis. Um so we we've done a lot of work in autonomy. When it comes to these kinds of issues, I don't represent those companies, so I can talk a little bit more freely. It's you can only do so much, right? Like um, and they are unfortunate. Any incident, any accident is unfortunate. Um, if a cat was sitting under a wheel of a human-driven vehicle, then there's a slightly better chance that a human might have walked by that side of the car and noticed it. But if they got on on the other side of the car, there is, like you said, there's no sensor or ability to detect like under a vehicle, right? We may get to a point where uh sensors are cheap enough, compute is cheap enough, connectivity is cheap enough that it's easy for us to add sensors wherever on a vehicle for that 0.0000001% chance that there's something under the vehicle because it probably is that small, right? Those kinds of incidents. But um, you know, I think it takes a long time and a lot of maturing of technology that's used in human and autonomous vehicles to get to a point where it's like cheap enough to like do that kind of edge case, right? So I think they are they are when you look at the data and stuff that Waymo has started to be more public about, probably in light of these kind of events, yeah, it's it's hard to argue with the world would be a better place when it comes to traffic fatalities and incidents as we move towards this kind of future. I think one of the things uh that has been tough to deal with in the space is we're still at a kind of um storming norming kind of stage around autonomous vehicles. So everyone has their own platform. There's there's good sensory kind of capability that is trying to replicate human sensing, right? Like LIDAR capability and computer vision can see things, interpret things, and react accordingly based on knowledge that the vehicle has about itself and how fast it's going, its telemetry, what it weighs, number of passengers in there. Sometimes when you're designing experiences, you can get romantically excited about the idea of more V2X of vehicle to other systems. So V2I is one like vehicle to infrastructure. Like if you had relatively cheap sensors and we could wave a magic wand and cities and municipalities could catch up with this kind of thing, I wouldn't need to like teach a vehicle what a red light looks like or a street corner looks like in the same way. That might be a yes and to literally getting like real-time data about light or whatever. And then you talk about like a more of a standards-based approach to it. It's like crews are gone now. But if there was a cruise vehicle and a Waymo vehicle, they may be able to communicate in a common standard that I weigh this many thousand pounds because I'm loaded in this way, I'm traveling at this speed, and this model of vehicle with this wear of tire over its time that it's been installed, all sensor and databased could say, I take 30 feet to stop, and I'm coming this way, and I take this many feet to stop. Therefore, quick handshake, you don't even know, but you get more of a true minority report future, and maybe the ability for vehicles to almost become infrastructure in the future, right? And traffic lights change and that kind of thing. But we're not there yet. Everyone's working on their own piece. So sometimes when you're designing the interfaces and things, you can be like frustrated with the need to like train these things to look around like a human when it seems so simple to create some less competitive ways to communicate with one another. But it's all good, it's just part of you know an emerging industry. And I'm I'm very um positive towards its future, right? And when you look at the data that Waymo released on like sort of their level of incidence versus human drivers of a similar population, it's it's hard to argue with like, man, we at least need to be exploring central business districts and stuff, like moving to be autonomous and like work vehicles only and stuff like that in the future, right? You know, when the when the time's right. But yeah, I'm excited about the tech and it's fun to work in that space.

Roopinder 32:03

Yeah, well, you and I both. I'm I'm excited about the tech too. I cover it, I fall in love with technology that I see. I think the problem is more or less uh the public at large, you know, are they gonna be tolerant of even one cat or even one human? Well, in reality, you and I know this you know, what is it, 35,000 deaths a year from in the US alone from uh vehicles? And how many would there be with autonomous, full autonomous vehicle driving? A lot less, I'm sure. But we're in a we're in a climate where we can't tolerate even one death. It's like it's too much, headlines, right?

Matt 32:43

So sentiment can swing very quickly, right? Like in the internet and social media, yeah, agreed. Um, you know, one of the things we've explored with a few brands is sort of like what's the future of the dealership around, you know, I'm talking like five, 10-year horizons when more L4-ish or even advanced L3 vehicles become become a thing. And we found in our research qualitative, right? So, you know, you're talking less than a couple of dozen people, but over periods of time, hundreds of people that we talk to, but but not anything quantitative, but even just in the qualitative and the anecdotes we hear, if you put someone in the experience and they get to see it and feel it, yeah, it they're very quick to understand the value of what it provides. So we I always tell people in San Francisco, come and sit and take your library. Right.

Roopinder 33:33

And then you wouldn't have all these delusions.

Pedestrian Communication And External HMI

Matt 33:36

People will come around, I think, but uh and they understand how it could fit in their life very quickly, right? Like you hear immediate stories of like, oh, I would use this when I'm doing this, this, or this kind of task, you know, that kind of thing. So I think like some of the brands will have to get behind using assets they have, like dealer, they don't own all the dealerships, but like they can partner with them to, you know, maybe it's simulations or it's come experience that feature in a more controlled environment, right? That kind of thing to build it up. And then another one I think, and it's kind of back to your original question about like what have we done around uh pedestrian stuff. It's it's not the core driver of the tech right now, like how it interacts with pedestrians, which sounds scary, but it's just not. It's like they're working on like drive capability, interface, debugging, you know, like and there's interface work to be done there. There's lots to just be done to kind of get it, get your couple of you know, billion miles ideally, and really be know you you're safe. But um on the pedestrian side, there's a lot more that could be done. We've looked at like, you know, you lose the driver, you lose quite a few things, right? Like when we were first working on autonomous vehicles, it's like when you go to an airport, you tell the driver a lot of things. Since our work there, you've seen Uber and other companies adopt, like pick which airline you go into, and yeah, sort of slowly trying to like automate a lot of that anyway. But again, like early on in our autonomous days, we were highlighting like all the things you lose when you don't have a driver, and that's a big one. It's like you know, being able to say, like, hey, you're Matt, right? And I go, Yeah, I'm Matt. And they go, Cool, where are you going? And you know, even that they got out in the app, there's all these soft touches, and they say, What airline? Because that didn't used to be a part of the flow, and the disambiguation you do human to human is very real. And on the pedestrian sense, uh, even a like a uh, I'll use a British word here, even at a zebra crossing, there's um there's eye contact that happens between you and a driver, very common, and it's really subconscious. You almost miss it if you're not really paying attention for it. But it's like, what how does a vehicle communicate with lights or some other kind of new medium on the outside of the vehicle, or at least repurposing it that it's safe to cross and things like that. So we've done a lot of like digging there, and now I'd say the brands haven't focused on that yet, but there'll be a tipping point. And I think that could help with like public opinion too, because it's another way for you to begin to build trust with the technology, right? Because trust really breaks down into critical things in relationships or in technology and everything. And one of them is communication. You want to have clear communication between you and a tech technology to start to build trust in it. If you don't have that, you it's hard to trust. And if if anything, it can impact it negatively if it behaves in a way that you're not expecting, right?

Roopinder 36:22

Exactly. I've noticed that quite a bit these days that uh people don't trust the AI with just get a question and get an answer. Engineers, especially, the answer we get back is not uh what we expect because it's not interactive, it's not uh you know, if tech interacted with us, if AI interacted with us, we'd be better off getting to the final result. And that's just not happening. You want to go back to trust again because you notice that one of those projects you're working on is a look like a look like a little mini school bus. So yeah, we have uh so Waivo. I don't know if I trust Waivo to deliver my kids to school, but something that looks like a little yellow school bus. It seems like psychology, it seems a little bit safer to me.

A Friendlier Autonomous School Vehicle

Matt 37:10

That one is a concept piece, and we I'd say every year or so we'll we'll take some time to do a concept piece, normally to the end of um provoking an industry that we're maybe interested in, or more commonly provoke an industry we're already partnered with. So, you know, sometimes the genesis of those before we've done the thinking and stuff can be as simple as like, hey, you know, what would be the most provocative thing around all this work we're doing on autonomy? And you hit the nail on the head, it's trusting it with your children, right? So we've since taken many of those ideas and integrated them into real projects that are a mix of public or or not so far. And some of the things are bidirectionality, this is pre-cruise, right? It's like bi-directionality in the vehicle because you can do more stops on curbs if you're like truly bidirectional. So that helps with safety, right? Versus a school bus that drops off and then kids have to cross the road, right? So despite stop signs being up, it's one of the main places that accidents and things can occur, right? The vehicles themselves aren't even really set up to facilitate the driver leaning out to wave people away or anything like that, right? Their exit is on the same side as the students. So even if you have like a bus driver that's going above and beyond, they're not even really set up to facilitate crossing the street or anything like that. So you got to be watch out for that. And the other one was sort of this idea, and we've integrated into products we've done with Google and Disney and Nickelodeon, which is around um sort of parents and children and surveillance in the digital age and what's okay, what's enough. You know, you do see behaviors with air tags and other things where parents are kind of like quietly low-jacking their children to like know where they are, check that they're safe and all this kind of stuff. And we've always built in the idea that like as kids sort of progress through their own journey with technology, you want to make some of the surveillance like bi-directional. So it might start early on with a parent with a pre-cell phone age kid being able to like check where they are, but the kid is made aware that the parents are checking in on them. We've done stuff where it's more appropriate the kid can then send like an emo emoji or like a hug back, and then the parent gets a special type of vibration so that they know that their kid knows that they're checking on them and everything's good, you know. So we try to build in stuff like that, which is kind of again, it's just poking at, hey, how's this all gonna like really integrate into our culture, right? Versus the the versions we have right now that could kind of go one way or the other. They could go a more dystopian future where, yeah, we're all low-jacked, but there is no transaction. You just know where I'm at. And that's weird and uncomfortable, and it threatens independence as I get older. So we try to build in what we call um preferred futures, you know, just to provoke the partners we work with.

Roopinder 40:06

Good luck with that concept. I hope it works. Everything you said about it, about the school, I'll call it the new school bus, the mini school bus or whatever. We spoke to the one side of my brain. Okay, it's bi-directional. I get that. It's probably it's not huge, so it's not going to cause a big sensation as it pulls up. But most of it speaks to the other side of my brain, which I think this just looks safe. This like this just looks, it doesn't look like something that's gonna run over a cat or a small child, right? This is it it escapes all of those preconceptions and it makes it just it's just a friendly looking design.

Matt 40:43

Yeah, we we we paid a lot of attention to that, making it look friendly, non-threatening, make it look like it can't go fast or be dangerous, like those kinds of things. And then we made it small. Actually, the reason the main reason we made it smaller was um when we investigated sort of uh buses across the country, there's a ton of deadheading buses, right? So it's like, you know, you're you're driving for long periods of time with no kid on board, or maybe one kid, which you know, we thought that there was sort of where we are with technology now, more of an ability to disrupt that. And we can fit many of these vehicles in the same footprint as a bus and operate more efficiently than one large vehicle with many seats. It's not true for every route, but it is it's more true than it's not by a large margin. So we mean we ended up getting it didn't go anywhere, but we got a lot of interest from like the Walton Foundation and other groups that were like, I think dealing with similar problems in some of their investments. So we went and sort of like talked about the concept with them, which is fine. You know, it's good networking for us, and it's okay that nothing comes from the provocation sometimes. They're more uh they're one for us, I guess, is the way we look at them.

Roopinder 41:54

Interesting that take seeks on its own, takes the uh initiative and ventures products from their own, right? I I swear you must be all the time thinking of things as you as you drive, thinking how you could make that make that better or make something work better.

Matt 42:09

I have a text thread with some old friends of mine at a previous company, Frog Design, where like pre-Uber you would do these like workshop activities to come up with new ideas. And like I have a photograph that I use and sometimes use it in talks and stuff, where it's all the times that Uber was like invented as an idea post-cell phone pre-Uber on like a little half sheet that was pinned on a wall, and people would vote great from a user point of view, really hard to implement or something like that. And then you occasionally it's just a joke of ours, like all the things that get invented while you're working on another project that don't go anywhere.

Roopinder 42:47

Matt, I've spent all of our time so far talking about projects that are interesting to me that you guys are doing. What have I left out? Is there anything you want to bring up that uh you're really strong about?

Concept Provocations And Industry Impact

Faster Visualization And Humanoid Robots

Matt 42:58

There's some cool stuff showing up in the ability to like visualize like very quickly, right? So things that used to be long rendering processes or maybe would involve like rigging like a skeletal structure to a robot. We're doing a lot of humanoid robots, and that's quite exciting. And you know, in the past, if you wanted to visualize those, you'd go through 3D modeling, rigging, then animating, building environments, and like now we can do some really cool stuff with a few different sort of steps and different tools to kind of rig and show robots doing the tasks that we imagine for them in 20 minutes, you know, versus in the past that might be multiple weeks to get uh you know an MOV file or WMV out of that to show a client. So it's helping us kind of explore more broadly. It's another version of like thinking through making, working at low fidelity to try things, get opinions, get perspectives. So that's been very exciting. I think another one for me. A talk coming up at South by Southwest next week about it, next weekend, that's all about um sort of the role of software designers, kind of like post-AI, um, hitting like a level of maturity. And what's exciting for me there is like today, it's exciting and scary, I'd say. Um, we're very like outcome driven, right? Like we design all of the screen states, how all the features will work, and we really map out the majority of you know an application. And then we work with developers, they lift the code from our design tools because they're pretty well integrated these days, and they can get the CSS from them and go build things, and then we partner with them to protect design intent. There's a whole bunch of interesting things changing. We're in an era already where I can build tools myself, right? And I can code them, I can release them, and it's very quick to kind of do that as someone with a design sensibility, or even just maybe an idea of a need and an opportunity, right? Not even as much design. I think what that's leading to is sort of um a proliferation of new stuff coming out, maybe, maybe um some gaps I see that are more information architecture, sort of site map like logical organizational principles kind of don't show up in there, right? But but that will get better over time. Then I think the role of design will kind of shift to be more real-time versions of what I'm talking about there, where I may get in a car, you may get in with me, and maybe my kids with me, right? And maybe we're in a Waymo in San Francisco. And when all three of us are in the vehicle, as long as we've allowed for the permissions and all that kind of stuff, the experience we get won't just like modify and sort of a rote rule, like Rapinda is here, yes, Matt is here, yes, therefore, do these things and this is what's allowed. It'll be like truly personalized and contextualized and based on weather and the trip we're taking, all of that can go into a melting pot. The thing that's interesting to me there is designers won't be able to draw every outcome. Instead, we will be guardrailing these systems to provide an experience that's right by the brand and all that kind of stuff. And we'll be building assets that have to responsively reconfigure to present the right kind of controls, the right shape, like all this kind of stuff. And for me, that's like there's a lot of opportunity there, right? Um, to come up with new experiences for people that are very exciting for the brands that we partner with. So, you know, that's like one of the things, you know, that that that has been called emergent design. I don't think that's like an established term yet, but it's one that I've been using. That's very thrilling to me with some of the work that we're doing. Although I'd say we're still sort of one step removed from that future, but I can kind of see how we might get there and and some of our work is advanced enough that we'll get to play in that capacity.

Roopinder 46:53

Matt, I wish we had more time. I hope we can get another show where you could talk more about what you're gonna do with AI. This has been great. Matt, thanks so much for coming on. Thank you for listening to FoDES the Future of Design and Engineering Software Show, brought to you by ENGTechnica. I hope you have learned of a new application or technology that will help you with your job. If you have an application you think would be of interest to other engineers, please let me know by emailing me at roopinder at engtechnica.com or message me on LinkedIn.