From breakthrough technology to a complete system of product experiences.
2025–2026 · Uniphy · Integrated Design
Uniphy developed BeyondTouch™, a tactile technology that goes beyond conventional capacitive touch.
My role was to help transform this breakthrough interaction principle into tangible product experiences, working demonstrators, digital twins, future scenarios and public communication.
This is where Integrated Design became central: connecting product experience, interface behavior, real-time prototyping, sensory feedback, visualization and strategic narrative into one coherent process.
Uniphy has created pressure-sensitive tactile surfaces based on the internal refraction of light.
BeyondTouch™ is not simply an improved capacitive touch system. It offers a different way of reading interaction through a surface, adding pressure sensitivity, robustness and expressive potential.
Its value is especially relevant in contexts where conventional touch struggles: moisture, dirt, gloves, grease, steam and complex physical environments.
BeyondTouch™ cannot be fully understood through specifications alone.
Its value becomes clear when people can see it, touch it, feel its pressure response and imagine where it could live.
The challenge was to turn a new interaction principle into concrete experiences: working prototypes, visual systems, digital environments and communication tools able to make the technology understandable, desirable and credible.
The collaboration began after meeting Uniphy CEO Jim Nicholas during Milan Design Week 2025.
Uniphy was developing a new hardware-based tactile technology, while I was working on parametric graphics, procedural visual systems and interaction-driven interfaces.
The match was immediate: BeyondTouch™ could generate new physical interaction, while QubeGraphix could turn that interaction into live visual feedback driven by pressure, signals and behavior.
I joined the project as an integrated design accelerator, working directly with the Uniphy team from summer 2025.
Instead of separating product design, UX/UI, prototyping, visualization and communication into disconnected phases, we treated them as one continuous process.
My role was to bring a compact multidisciplinary capability: moving quickly, building working examples, creating strategic and visual material, and helping the company show the potential of its technology with clarity and impact.
Each activity was designed to make BeyondTouch™ more tangible: easier to demonstrate, easier to imagine inside real products, and easier to communicate to clients, partners and the public.
Most of the work was developed in close collaboration with Uniphy. The final section, Integrated Design Twin, is presented as a self-initiated extension developed during the collaboration through the evolution of my own software.
We created functional and interactive digital twins of Uniphy's automotive demonstrators: two armrests integrating tactile controls, illuminated UI elements, screens and haptic feedback.
They were used to explore CMF alternatives, illuminated UI variations, screen layouts and visual directions.
Uniphy gained flexible virtual versions of its physical demonstrators, useful for design reviews, sales presentations, client meetings, renders, videos and communication material.
We redesigned the complete user experience of Picasso, one of Uniphy's automotive demonstrators, using the existing hardware as a base.
The work included a new GUI, illuminated UI elements, revised haptics, sound design and the software layer required to coordinate everything as one integrated experience.
Uniphy presented a significantly updated Picasso demonstrator at CES Las Vegas in January 2026, with visuals, sound, haptics and interaction working together as a more coherent product experience.
We created new product concepts beyond automotive, placing BeyondTouch™ inside everyday home environments.
A virtual domestic space showed smart products such as an oven, coffee machine, thermostat, smart shower and smart mirror, highlighting interaction challenges linked to moisture, dirt, grease and steam.
Uniphy gained a fast way to open conversations in the home appliance sector without building physical demonstrators for every product category.
We developed Da Vinci as a modular tactile demonstrator platform, starting from an idea already present in Uniphy's roadmap.
The platform combines interchangeable dials, domes, sliders and buttons, allowing clients to assemble configurations and simulate future devices directly on their desk.
The project included industrial design, 3D modeling, 3D printing, electronic prototyping, rendering, video production and a dedicated digital twin.
Da Vinci turned a roadmap idea into a physical and digital platform, making BeyondTouch™ more immediate, accessible and engaging for clients.
We created two one-minute hyperrealistic concept videos showing possible future implementations of BeyondTouch™ in real-world contexts.
The work combined automotive and industrial design, video editing and AI-assisted concept development for automotive and robotics scenarios.
The videos helped Uniphy communicate the future potential of BeyondTouch™ in a fast, credible and emotionally engaging way.
I worked directly with Uniphy's CEO on new business directions, market reasoning, trend analysis and future positioning.
This brought together product thinking, technology awareness and long-term experience with innovative products and emerging fields.
Uniphy gained a focused external perspective to support decisions around opportunities, risks and possible future directions.
We brought together the full body of work developed for Uniphy: technology knowledge, visual assets, videos, renders, interface concepts and communication copy.
This material became the basis for a renewed website, combining marketing, storytelling, visual design and front-end implementation in one compact process.
Uniphy gained a stronger public-facing presence in a short timeframe, with technology, visuals and narrative connected into a more coherent communication system.
During the collaboration, I independently evolved the digital twins into a more advanced live design environment, driven by QubeGraphix and my broader software system.
The Integrated Design Twin allowed graphics, 3D models, materials and product configurations to be changed live, while being controlled in real time by the physical Picasso device.
Uniphy gained a richer digital environment to explore and present possible BeyondTouch™ products before physical prototypes are built, without a dedicated development phase.
Jim Nicholas, Uniphy's CEO, described the work as "an enormous acceleration and consolidation" of the company's potential.
The project helped Uniphy present BeyondTouch™ not only as a technical breakthrough, but as a set of tangible products, working experiences, digital twins, future scenarios and communication tools.
Picasso became a complete CES demonstrator. Da Vinci transformed a roadmap idea into a physical and digital platform. The future scenario videos made the technology easier to imagine in real contexts. The renewed website brought the material together into a stronger public-facing presence.
The Integrated Design Twin added another layer: a live environment where digital representations could become tools for creating, testing and communicating future alternatives.
This is Integrated Design applied from the inside.
The value was not only in delivering separate outputs, but in connecting them across the whole experiential life of the technology: product vision, prototypes, interface behavior, sensory feedback, digital twins, future scenarios, strategic positioning and public communication.
A compact multidisciplinary capability can enter an organization, work directly with the team, and accelerate progress without replacing it.
The result was not just a collection of assets. It was a stronger ability for Uniphy to show, explain, sell and imagine the future of its own technology.
Get in touch
Let's give it direction, behavior and presence.
