Our newly published report on the 2026 DVN Interior Workshop in Köln explores the crucial question of how to configure increasing amounts of in-car technology so users genuinely perceive and appreciate it.
The Köln workshop highlighted priorities that will shape our discussions at the Detroit event soon: functional interior lighting, relevant rather than performative AI, smart surfaces combining sensing and haptics, earlier UX validation, and new seating architectures balancing comfort, flexibility, circularity, and cost.
In Detroit, OEM and supplier designers and engineers will examine this transformation from a North American perspective. The DVN interior team will be joined by industry experts including independent design journalist Laura Burstein, automotive design strategist Karolina Auer, design executive and LTU associate professor Thomas Prevost, Neoniq Design and Brand Director Flore Tramblin-Colard, Lumen-Trust CEO Felix Urbina, and haptics expert Jörg Reisinger. Together, they will help connect our international network more closely with the North American ecosystem.
Among these themes, haptics deserves particular attention. Technology is proliferating in the cockpit, but the most valuable interactions are sometimes those we notice only when they disappear. Jörg Reisinger offers a particularly evocative parallel between haptics and the bass line in music by way of introducing the discussion he will lead in Detroit:
Only When the Bass Is Gone
The bass in an orchestra: you don’t consciously pick it out, but without it, the harmony doesn’t hold and the sound falls massively flat.
With haptics, it’s remarkably similar. This bass – the haptics – has always been present in cars, whether in the high-quality surface beneath your hand or in the satisfying click of a switch. Quality was never just decoration; it was always part of comfort, safety, and a sense of ease, and, in the end, of luxury.
Pure touchscreen operation has taken this bass away from the customer. Now the pendulum is swinging back, toward mechanical buttons and natural surfaces. Understandable, but does a radical return make sense in every case? After all, there were good reasons for the touchscreen, and the smarter answer probably lies in between: in how you properly design, effectively specify, and integrate passive, active, and surface haptics. And it might even save money along the way.
Just how much this bass is missed shows in nearly every user study we’ve run: we take the haptic feedback away, and – without exception – participants notice that something is missing. They can’t really name it, but they feel the loss. Again and again, different people reach for the same drastic image, saying the surface now feels ‘like a dead fish’.
Haptics has been my focus for over 22 years, from a product-focused doctoral thesis all the way to mass production. Developed, designed, brought into production. Above all, I’ve learned one thing: in the end it comes down to coherence, not just effects. And coherence only emerges when haptics is considered early, together with architecture, UI and design.
That’s exactly what we’re bringing to the table in Detroit: “Beyond the Hype—What Really Works in the Car”, transparent, and with room for questions and solutions.
I’d be glad to have you with us.
Dr. Jörg Reisinger, Chair of the DVN Haptic Track
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