I didn't walk into RNTBCI as a designer. I walked in as someone who was deeply curious about what happens when design meets engineering specifically in the context of vehicles, cockpits, and the human beings who sit inside them.
My internship in 2021 was where that curiosity got its first real test. No established playbook, no design system handed to me. Just briefs, problems, and the expectation to figure it out.
My first significant project was a telepresence robot and it was everything at once. Form development, 3D modelling, UX design, and physical ergonomics, all in the same scope. I had to think about how the robot looked and how someone would actually use it. That overlap between aesthetics and function, between physical design and digital experience became the lens I now carry into every project.
Alongside that, I developed HMI concepts for in-vehicle systems. A blind spot monitoring interface built around 3D vehicle models. An infotainment mascot designed to interact with both the driver and passengers a proof of concept presented to senior management. These weren't shipped products. They were ideas that had to earn their place in a room full of engineers and product leads. That taught me something no brief can: how to defend a design decision with clarity.
At the end of my internship, I was brought on full-time as a UI/UX Designer.
The nature of the work changed the stakes got higher, the timelines got tighter, and the scope got real. I was no longer exploring concepts in isolation. I was part of a process that fed directly into production vehicles and live digital products.
The first thing I had to learn was how to hold a design vision through multiple layers of review internal teams, external partners, engineering constraints, and platform guidelines without losing what made the design good in the first place. That skill doesn't come from a course. It comes from iteration, from pushback, and from learning which battles to fight and which ones to absorb.
Four years. Two roles. One organisation that kept raising the bar.
Numbers from a body of work that largely lives under NDA — but the impact is real.
10+
Projects delivered
200+
screens designed
2
HMI Concepts
10+
Stakeholder reviews
Every project at RNTBCI follows the same core discipline regardless of whether it's an in-vehicle HMI or a digital product.
Every engagement starts with unpacking the business objective, platform constraints, and user context before touching a single frame. This phase produces a clear design brief and scope definition that all stakeholders align on before the work begins.
User profiles, task flows, and information architecture come next. I map who the user is, what they're trying to do, and what the system needs to support structuring the experience before designing it.
Low-fidelity wireframes and interaction notes are the first output capturing use cases and edge cases, not aesthetics. These are reviewed and aligned with stakeholders before any visual design begins. From there, high-fidelity screens are built within the design system, maintaining consistency across every component and state.
Design decisions are stress-tested through internal and external stakeholder reviews. For HMI work specifically, this includes reviewing for glance time compliance, safety considerations, and platform guidelines layers of validation that don't exist in standard digital design.
Handoff isn't the end. I coordinate closely with development teams through implementation annotating specifications, resolving edge cases, and ensuring the final product matches the designed intent.
The work at RNTBCI has pushed me across a broad set of design methods some standard, some specific to the automotive domain.
Stakeholder interviews, user profiling, task flow mapping, information architecture, lo-fi wireframing, interaction documentation, and design critique cycles.
Glance time analysis, occupancy-aware layout design, environment-adaptive theming, safety-first interaction constraints, and in-vehicle ergonomics consideration.
Cross-functional reviews with engineering, product, and external OEM stakeholders. Design system governance to maintain consistency across teams and handoff cycles.
“Tools in practice”
Today, my role spans the full design lifecycle at RNTBCI from the earliest research and user profiling stages through to final handoff and developer coordination.
Every project starts with understanding the problem space: business goals, user context, platform constraints. I build user profiles and task flows before touching a frame, because the shape of the solution only makes sense once you understand the shape of the problem.
From there, it's wireframes, interaction notes, stakeholder reviews, and design system components all moving in parallel with engineering timelines. Handoff isn't the end of the process. It's where the design has to prove it was built to survive contact with the real world.
My most significant shipped work is the Personal Audio Zone (PAZ) system for Nissan North America an in-vehicle HMI that gives passengers independent control of audio zones within the same cabin. The work lives in production vehicles. I can't show the screens, but I can tell you that designing for in-vehicle systems is a discipline of its own: every interaction is constrained by glance time, physical ergonomics, safety requirements, and the reality that the user is also driving.
5 years at RNTBCI has given me something portfolio projects can't replicate the experience of designing inside a real organisation, with real constraints, for real users.
I've learned to collaborate across disciplines where the vocabulary is different. I've learned to simplify without losing depth. I've learned that good design in an automotive context isn't about what looks impressive in a case study it's about what works at 100 km/h, in low light, with one eye on the road.
The confidentiality of this work means I can't show you most of what I've built here. But it's shaped everything I bring to the work you can see.
