Mercedes Benz User Experience (MBUX)
Rear Seat Entertainment app
BYOD
* Confidential information is omitted and all the features and information described here is in conformance with non-disclosure agreement with the company.
About BYOD (Bring Your Own Device)
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BYOD is a replacement iOS app for a paid tablet device and part of Mercedes Me app family acts as a remote control for infotainment display panels at rear seats.
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Users can control & manage infotainment features.
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My responsibility was to lead the Design of the project with consistent UX deliverables in planned sprints.
Why BYOD?
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Mobiles have personal and emotional connect with users.
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Highly personalised and tailored experience integrated with user profiles
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Deep integration with analytics engine
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To match the experience of NTG-7 which has Intelligent access to features and functions based on context to create deeper user engagement.
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CCR had complex screen navigation and low discoverability with usability problems. It has features hidden beneath the layers of screens without any intelligence to understand the context of use or main scenarios.
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App for Rear Seat infotainment features would be accessible to everyone with iOS device rather than having a single device.
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Apps give more flexibility and control and software update the for new features is easier.
The Design Team
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India is Satellite R&D center and largest after Germany and we specialise in getting the product to the market for different car lines and different markets globally, like Europe, china etc.
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Our design team works in close collaboration with product owners, different R&D centres to translate the their vision to a product for different markets.
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We also make sure that our solutions conform to Style guides and Design System of MBUX
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I worked on several projects for MBUX ecosystem, catering to different solutions like NTG-7, AMG track pace app for telemetry
My Role
UX DESIGNER
Team
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1 UX Designer
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1 Visual Designer
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Product manager
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Development team
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Testing team and German counterparts
My Contributions
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User insights
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Interaction Design
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Personas & Scenarios and Customer Journeys
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Task flows
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Wireframes & User Flows
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Visual designs
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Style Guide enhancement, iconography & thematic changes.
The Challenge
Mercedes is Premium brand and is a self expression, its an emotion. What I mean by this it reflects, luxury, comfort, safety and sophistication which is extension of our user’s personalities.
Three things were essential:
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To understand the ecosystem of rear seat functions
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Business need: Premium section is layered with users belonging to different parts of a social pyramid (A, C, E, S, G, Maybach classes). Tailoring an in car experience and outside the car experience so that an S class user is happy with the choice and an A-Class user is looking forward for an upgrade to an S-Class. This is complex and major business need and all the solutions have to conform to this.
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Conform to this philosophy and essence of what Mercedes Cars stand for as a brand.
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Conform to the driver distraction guide lines of the company and the design system
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Craft Reflective design which is concerned with how users rationalize and intellectualize a product according to highly personal and subjective factors. The product has to translate to self -expression of the users.
The Design Process
We as a core design team of Daimler follow Design Thinking dedicatedly to craft usable, aesthetic and luxurious experiences. Based on the context we conduct different design thinking activities. Empathy being the core value, we have to go beyond and craft reflective emotional model of design.
Empathise
Define
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Travel and collaborate with R&D centres for user research
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Collect and understand user insights.
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Research and understand the car infotainment ecosystem
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Create personas of main market segments
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Derive customer journeys
Ideate
Test
Prototype
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Brainstorming sessions with global teams and stakeholders
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Task Analysis & Flows
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Low-Fi User Flows on whiteboard
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Hi-Fi Wireframes
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Interactive Prototypes
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Visual Designs
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User Flows
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Collect & Understand usability test results
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Implement usability improvements
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A/B Testing
Learning about the users
Empathise
What I did:
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Collaborated different R&D centres for users interviews and insights.
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Brainstormed with Product Owner to understand the consumers.
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Researched and understood the infotainment system and related dynamics of multiple displays on rear seats.
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Studied the interview notes and feedback to derive qualitative research points.
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Empathised and connected with the users and understood the interactions in real world context.
Insight
“I have to customise the settings every time I am on the back seat”
Users had difficulty in customising settings like sound, lighting and seat settings and heating from Rear Seat Display every time they took ride, specially with the family.
“The kids sometimes overindulge, we want them to talk and have fun when we drive to our Parents home together”
Insight
Parents are concerned about kids screen time during weekend getaway rides
Insight
“Sometimes I don’t want to set it up, it’s too much work”
The rear seat function is overloaded with multitude of features and navigating to customise or select infotainment settings had high cognitive load.
“My playlist is gone, light settings are different. Sometimes I want to read a book or just relax”
Insight
Users had strong need of personalisation of infotainment settings, specially for the set of features which were frequently used.
Insight
“I have to open and find the episode of the series all over again, it’s annoying.”
Children were busy on weekdays and had relaxation time on weekends. They wanted to continue watching their favourite programmes, Netflix series on weekend family drives.
Personas & Customer Journeys
Define
What I did:
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Refined personas and archetypes personas from the user research to fit the context
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Main customer journeys to deduce the touch points.
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Scenarios to understand the real world context use and UX opportunities.
Main Designs Principles at work
Reducing the cognitive load holistically
Bridge gaps in infotainment experience
Driver Distraction guidelines
App should not interfere with driver settings
A weekend family drive to the parents home is most relevant journey to understand the context and to derive UX opportunities and touchpoints.
Brainstorming sessions & Low-Fi Prototypes
Ideate
We conducted brainstorming sessions including below exercises
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Card-sorting to affirm the correct groupings of app features
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Created Information Architecture
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Low-fi prototypes and Task flows
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Understanding the use -case cluster and in-car experience to inform the design iterations
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Ideas to understand the extent of personalisation and what features to personalise
User Flows and Visual Designs
Prototype
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Created module wise wireframes.
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Created holistic User-Flows and happy flows and error handling.
Visual Designs
What I Did?
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Created Visual Designs based on MBUX Design System.
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Contributed to enhancement of Style Guide
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Iconography and Thematic changes.
Usability Improvements
Test
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Assist Product Owner and collaborate with German research team and UT team.
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Collect and brainstorm the results of usability tests from different satellite R& D centres.
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Implement usability improvements.
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A/B Testing to inform the designs
Examples below:
Example 1:
Low discoverability and extra clicks (motor load) for frequently accessed radio station list like , Favourites, Popular.
Fix:
Personalised list of frequently accessed stations by user on main screen of tuner with an entry point to all the options.
Example 2:
Business Impact
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Revenue generation through selective monitisation. Philosophy of selective monetisation where user can buy the features in the set of custom packages like OTA (Over The Air) updates or ADAS banking on the power of software.
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If a user does not want to any package he or she can simply opt out. This takes care of user needs as well as business needs, opening a proper monetisation channel.
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More projects for our design team and grabbed a in car-UX design project for EV assist module.
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Better app rating and customer feedback for different markets for OTA package activation and app features.
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Plug and play car infotainment software which is flexible to cater to global markets. Based on the demographics any third party vendors can be replaced, for example Spotify to WeChat.
Norbert Neuber, Product Owner,
Daimer AG
Rohit has crafted top-notch and aesthetic experiences in every feature of the app. His designs are high quality that work flawlessly. We have worked together on multiple projects and he is brilliant in his understanding of system as well as in communication with development teams.