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Image by Philipp Katzenberger

MBUX

ZERO LAYER

New Mercedes-Benz Head Unit

About the project
My Role
INTERACTION DESIGN & USABILITY ANALYSIS
Timeline
6 Months
Team
Mercedes-Benz User Experience (MBUX)
What is NTG-7?

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  •  A new Head Unit for Mercedes Benz cars.

  • Built on the feedback of the previous generation NTG6.

  • Its designed to incorporate multimodal feedback like Voice and Gestures etc.

  •  Across the various functions it allows the hardware to be controlled via UI and touch panel alone.

  • It supports deep integration of 3D interactions and Augmented Reality features.

  •  Zero Layer UI and contextual interactions elevates the overall user experience.

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What I did?

Perform a detailed Usability Analysis of new Mercedes-Benz Head Unit display in collaboration with German Design team. The development of the touch display was running in parallel and I was asked to do a detailed UX review and Usability analysis of the software solution. In the given timeline I did the following:

  • Detailed Usability analysis of interactions and features.

  • Competitive Research

  • Usability improvements and suggestions

  • Interaction design for a feature called eAssist

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Detailed Usability Analysis 
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Competitive research and
Insights into UX
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Understanding the users

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  • Conducted and gathered insights from user interview sessions.

  • I deep dived into in-car UX and understood the main use cases.

  • Created personas and scenarios to understand the context.

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persona.png

Example scenario:

On Route charging point and then head to office.

Key emotions: Anxiety and indecisiveness.

CJ_Car-Charge.png

Key Screens for the 

customer journey

Interaction designs and Visual designs

1

Getting into the car and head​ towards charging point

Zero-Layer-StartCar-1.png

2

Gets an email from a client to meet up

Zero-Layer-Email-notif-2.png

3

Calls the client to decide the meeting plan.

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4

Charging the car

Zero-Layer-Charging-4.png

5

"Hey Mercedes" for meeting point suggestions

Zero-Layer-Meeting-suggestions-5.png

6

Intelligent suggestions from car for meeting points

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7

New optimised route from the car.

8

Optimised charging suggestion from the car and related information. Relaxing theme suggestion.

Zero-Layer-Relaxing-8.png

9

Scenic route suggestion from the car 

Zero-Layer-Scenic-route-9.png
Business Impact

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  • Intelligent Zero Layer which goes beyond usability and provides access features and functions based on context.

  • 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.

  •  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.

  • 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.

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Zero-Layer-new-route-7.png
Video of new infotainment system -  NTG-7
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