Buttons are back and storage is king when it comes to car interiors

Most recently, Patel was responsible for the new Rogue, Nissan’s bestselling family SUV. And its interior is a good one. Less minimalist than the all-electric Ariya, the new Rogue Hybrid has buttons and switches for most of its controls and a useful amount of storage built into the interior. Yet it’s not a boring design—the seats are a standout, taking inspiration from puffer jackets. And no, there’s no Piano Black in sight.

“People want easy, intuitive controls,” Patel said. “They want wireless charging. They want surfaces that are easy to manage and clean, keep clean and clutter-free, and they want lots of places to store things. Oh, and the last thing is, they want easy access.” So the new Rogue’s rear doors were engineered to open to 90˚ to make it easier to put in a kid’s car seat or help an elderly parent into the back. That would be less of a priority for a sedan being marketed at a more image-conscious customer, but vitally important for this segment.

“The target customer for this product… they have families and they have a lot of stuff. So you’ll notice that you open the door, and immediately there’s places to put stuff,” Patel said.

Utilitarian need not mean prosaic, however. As designers since the Bauhaus movement have proved, “everyday” doesn’t have to be ordinary. Patel shared that sentiment. “One of the exciting things and one of the really big challenging things of doing a car or doing design for a product that is a usable everyday product is when you can make that product beautiful,” he said. “There’s so much more that goes into our everyday usable products in terms of cost, engineering, usability, feasibility, everything. And then on top of that, we’re struggling and really trying our best to fight for every little millimeter that we can get that we feel is important to making sure that that product is appealing from a visual standpoint.”