We all have a particular lens on the world around us. Mine is seeing what’s possible. When I look at the world, my mind is designing a better way in real-time.

I am fascinated by why humanity struggles to the degree that it does to realize its potential and, after wrestling with the question for decades, now better understand the root of our predicament: We are bad at seeing the world from the perspective of others.

One of the ways this breakdown in empathy manifests most tangibly is the poorly designed products and services that we encounter every day. From handdryers to hotels; bluetooth speakers to banks; alarm clocks to airports… it’s as though they were created by people who had never had to use them.

Of the countless examples of questionable design, though, there is one that stands out for how widely it has proliferated, for how long it has persisted, and for how rarely its repercussions get acknowledged: The car interior.

I’ve been thinking about car interiors for as long as I can remember — literally… My very first memory is sitting in a lime-green Porsche 914 at age four — staring at its buttons.

As a child, cockpits had an almost magical quality. There was something fundamentally cool about this quintessential human-machine interface and, with so much variance from one model to the next, I jumped at every opportunity to ride in a different car.

The elegance of some design decisions left me enthralled: The perfectly weighted and textured metal of a seek switch; the universal use of one typeface throughout a cabin; the cathartic greeting of a mellifluous seatbelt chime.

But others left me perplexed — so clearly working against the best interests of drivers, and ultimately making our roads less safe.

I would vocalize my bewilderment to my fellow occupants, but rarely get back more than a shrug. Over the years, I learned to keep these thoughts to myself… As with bad design in all realms, people tend to be content with what they’re given.

But the research continued — and the result is a book that explores the many ways that modern car interiors fail to live up to their role as critical pilot environments. From this comprehensive census, patterns are drawn and principles are proposed to help advance the dialogue around the future of the cockpit.