Past work · R&D studio
2.5D terrain systems, touch tables, and early in-vehicle UX — fabrication meets spatial intelligence.
I helped build early multisensory interfaces for defense, aerospace, and automotive OEMs—combining hardware fabrication, UX innovation, and human-factors research. From 2.5D terrain systems to in-vehicle navigation concepts, I bridged physical and digital workflows to prototype high-stakes tools years before they became industry standards.
01
Foundations
Discovery & program framing
02
Terrain, TouchTable & Automotive UI
Fabrication, collaboration surfaces, and early in-cabin interaction
Pin-grid elevation driven by real geospatial data—touch-controlled focus, shift, and live terrain readouts for teams who needed geography without relying on language alone.
I helped fabricate a 2.5D terrain table that used a touch interface to control more than 3,500 motorized pins, each responding to real geospatial data. Selecting a location triggered the table to shift, focus, and render elevation changes in real time. The system allowed teams to interpret complex terrain without relying on language, enabling rapid, intuitive geographic analysis.
Workshop-built multi-user surfaces for large information spaces—networkable so distributed teams could share one virtual workspace.
As an industrial fabricator at AMI, I built these tables from scratch in the workshop. The TouchTable is an advanced system where multiple users can visualize, navigate, and analyze large amounts of information. Two or more TouchTables can be networked, allowing people in different locations to work together in a common virtual space.
Early in-cabin touch and Flash-era flows—navigation, personalization, and gesture experiments under real NHTSA pressure, without relying on hero renders.
Automotive IP
Early in-vehicle touch and Flash-era interaction—scoped to NHTSA constraints while still pushing navigation, personalization, and low-fidelity gesture experiments. Scan the cards for the thesis; open Full brief when you want the deeper program notes (no hero imagery for this line—prototype packs lived in Flash and review rooms).
Touch-screen automotive navigation with predictive address entry and side-rollout menus.
GM engaged us to design a new navigation experience for an 8-inch round display. With almost no precedent for touch in the cabin, we used side-rollout menus to pack navigation, points of interest, and personalization hooks into brutal real estate—prioritizing glanceability and reach for the driver while keeping flows legible in early Flash builds.
Interaction patterns tuned to strict NHTSA limits—fewer taps, less visual noise, less cognitive load.
In 2003, regulators capped how much typing drivers could do before lockout—often as few as nine keystrokes for address entry. We prototyped workarounds in Flash that respected those ceilings while still demonstrating usable destination flows, keeping distraction budgets explicit in every review.
Presets, themes, and multi-driver profiles years before those patterns were mainstream in phones.
Some of the first production touch surfaces lived in cars with narrow feature sets. We explored how wallpapers, saved layouts, and driver-specific presets could make shared vehicles feel less hostile—pairing personalization with the navigation and media stacks so the HMI felt coherent, not bolted on.
Flash prototypes for dials, menus, and gesture patterns—fast to iterate, honest about fidelity.
Low-fidelity motion studies let us test virtual dials, radial menus, and gesture affordances before hardware caught up. One thread looked at how dial-based controls could streamline media tasks (for example, song selection) while staying legible at arm’s length—useful for crits with HMI and engineering even when the visuals were deliberately rough.
03
Delivery & outcomes
Build-ready hardware, touch layers, and in-vehicle prototype packs
Work moved past slideware into runnable builds and shop-floor systems teams could hand to engineering and fabrication. Terrain, TouchTable, and Automotive UI are covered above as separate projects; this section closes the loop on GM in-vehicle IP (no imagery retained) and maps each program line to what was actually delivered.
What was delivered
What was delivered
What was delivered
