ID Team Wins Red Dot Award for Autonomous Shuttle Experience
November 10, 2025
The 2025 Red Dot Award in the Interface and User Experience Design category has been awarded to a group of ID alumni for their Autonomous Shuttle Experience for Campus Engagement project.
ID alumni Yiwen Teng (MDes 2024) and Zeya Chen (MDes 2021)
The Red Dot Award recognizes excellence in product design, brands and communication design, and design concepts. The Interface and User Experience Design category honors innovative projects, from mobile apps to VR environments and IoT devices, acknowledging the critical role of intuitive design in an increasingly connected world.
Led by Zeya Chen (MDes 2021), the project team included Design Lead Jianwei Zhang (MDes 2024), Interaction Designer Chenfeng (Jesse) Gao (MDes 2021), UI/UX Designer Yiwen Teng (MDes 2024), and Motion Designer Cheng-Jie Liu.
Autonomous Shuttle Experience for Campus Engagement
The award-winning design addresses transportation challenges on Illinois Tech’s urban campus and reimagines shuttle travel from a passive commute into an intelligent, adaptive campus experience. The concept emerged from a class partnership with Illinois Tech’s Robotics Labs.
Safety-Enhanced Design
The interface integrates live campus safety data directly into the shuttle experience.
When an emergency alert activates, the system modifies its UI in real time to explain the shuttle’s actions,: slowing, stopping, or detouring. Through transparency, the interface builds passenger trust. It doesn’t just show what’s happening, it shows why— linking AI decisions to comprehensible human narratives.
Personalized Riding Experience
The Human-Machine Interface (HMI) ecosystem personalizes each ride through secure authentication with the university’s student database. After identities are verified via app or card, the system greets the rider by name, displays destination shortcuts, and pushes relevant updates.
The interface spans onboard screens, student portals, mobile apps, and more, and synchs academic and transit schedules. Users can schedule, cancel, or reroute trips flexibly, without redundant logins or switching apps.
Ergonomic, Intuitive Design
A custom 27-inch touchscreen on a multi-axis bracket supports 260° horizontal and 300° vertical movement, ensuring optimal viewing and reach from any seat. Essential physical controls for stop, climate, and volume requests are optimized for one-handed use—manageable while holding bags or drinks.
Familiar gestures—tap, swipe, hold—reduce cognitive load. The system is designed for distracted, multitasking students, and prioritizes ease and clarity.
Beyond Transportation
Research revealed that Illinois Tech students seek more than basic point-to-point transportation. Through questionnaire surveys and user interviews, the team identified four core user needs:
- AI operation and trust, where users wanted transparency in how the autonomous system navigates and makes routing decisions.
- Journey management, with reliable arrival times and effective trip planning integrated with the Illinois Tech student portal system.
- Safety, with environmental hazard awareness and clear communication about routing decisions in real-time.
- Personalized engagement with customized services, academic schedules, and campus-related needs.
Design That Adapts
The team found that during routes lasting 15–22 minutes, users were more concerned with school-related and personally relevant information than with in-vehicle entertainment options. Students expected driverless campus shuttles to be more intelligent than ride-hailing systems and to better understand their individual needs.
Rather than creating a fixed interface, the team developed an adaptive visual system that adjusts based on ride context and integrates with existing campus infrastructure. The design connects directly with Illinois Tech’s student portal, campus security systems, and academic calendars to deliver contextually relevant information.
The interface provides transparent communication about autonomous decisions through color-coded indicators and real-time visualizations. Emergency maneuvers and rerouting decisions are communicated through comprehensible visual narratives that build trust in the AI system.
For shorter trips, the system minimizes unnecessary detail while prioritizing critical information. As the shuttle nears the library, it might remind students of overdue books. Passing academic buildings triggers displays of upcoming classes or meetings.
Human-Centered Autonomy
The physical design emphasizes ergonomic integration with a touchscreen mounted on an adjustable bracket designed for one-handed operation—acknowledging that students often carry backpacks, laptops, or coffee during their commutes.
This award highlights ID’s commitment to design solutions that address real-world challenges. By combining human-centered design with the potential of AI systems, the winning team demonstrated how autonomous systems can enhance rather than replace human agency in everyday experiences.