Industry leaders are slowly finding touchscreens in new-model cars to be very distracting and can cause a loss of focus on the road. My car still has a cassette player, so this obviously doesn’t apply to me, but the minute controls and over-filled screens on many touchscreen-enabled cars can be a lot more frustrating than my current “two knobs and a button” setup. Therefore, a problem needs to be solved: how do you create a touchscreen interface that can be operated hands free?

Designer Matthaeus Krenn is testing an interface that may just solve this problem. In his words: “I propose a new mode that can be invoked at any time: It clears the entire screen of those tiny, intangible control elements and makes way for big, forgiving gestures that can be performed anywhere. In place of the lost tactile feedback, the interface leverages the driver’s muscle memory to ensure their ability to control crucial features without taking their eyes off the road.”

What Sparks Our Fire: Not following a trend, but rather native-izing an existing technology to the needs and constraints of drivers.

Do you think this is a useful concept, or would you prefer the old-school version?