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. App acts as a remote control for rear seat infotainment features.
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User Profiles + AI Engine = Tailored & Personalised experience
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App with relevant set of features with customisation.
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My responsibility was to lead the Design of the project with consistent UX deliverables in planned sprints.
The Business Problem & Challenges
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Premium section is layered with users belonging to different parts of a social pyramid (A-Class, C-Class, E-Class, S-Class, G-Class, Maybach).
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To understand the ecosystem of rear seat functions, an iOS app with different and relevant set of features for all car classes A, C, E, S etc.
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Personalisation in connected car paradigm.
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Align with driver distraction guide lines.
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India is Satellite R&D center and largest after Germany. We closely work with German Product Owners and others R&D centres.
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In house Design Team, Development team and Testing team. Research teams & UT teams from different centres.
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Highly collaborative with clearly defined roles and with high synergy.
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Translate vision to a product for different car lines for different markets.
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We also make sure that our solutions conform to Style guides and Design System of MBUX
The Design Team
My Role
UX DESIGNER
Deliverables & Activities
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Collaborate for User interviews and research
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User insights analysis & synthesis
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Interaction Design
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Personas & Scenarios and Customer Journeys
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Task flows & Information Architecture
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Wireframes & User Flows
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Interactive prototypes
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Visual designs
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Enhancing Style Guide & Iconography
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Design for delivery in Sprints
The Design Process
We as a core design team of Daimler follow Design Thinking dedicatedly to craft usable, aesthetic and luxurious experiences.
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.
“I have to customise the settings every time I am on the back seat”
Insight
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
“Sometimes I don’t want to set it up, it’s too much work”
Insight
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 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.
Scenario: A weekend family drive to the parents home is most relevant journey to understand the context and to derive UX opportunities and touch-points.
Brainstorming sessions
Ideate
We conducted brainstorming sessions to:
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To understand the use -case cluster and in-car and outside car experience to inform the design iterations.
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To come up with innovative ideas.
Low-Fi prototypes and Task
flows
Ideate
I iterated on Task Flows and prototypes keeping in mind, the main design principles at work
Designs Principles at work
Reducing the cognitive load holistically
High discoverability
Bridge gaps in infotainment experience
Intuitive UI
Driver Distraction guidelines
Low learnability
Driver Distraction guidelines
Less cognitive & motor load
User Flows
Prototype
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Created module wise wireframes.
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Created holistic User-Flows and happy flows and error handling.
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Interactive Prototypes.
Connectivity flow
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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In house A/B testing to inform the designs
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Implement usability improvements.
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.
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Better app rating and customer feedback for different markets for OTA package activation and app features
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More projects for our design team.
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An iOS app with relevant and different set of features for different markets, if users don't want to buy the tablet.
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iOS App with scalable Plug and play car design which is flexible to cater to global markets for third party vendors (ex. Here Maps for Europe and Baidu Maps for China)
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Got recognised in department Town Hall
What could have been done differently?
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Better Stakeholder mapping to find out dependancies with other departments in time which could have improved the process.
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Interaction improvements in some of the settings module.
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.