
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.
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Built on the feedback of the previous generation NTG6.
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Its designed to incorporate multimodal feedback like Voice and Gestures etc.
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Across the various functions it allows the hardware to be controlled via UI and touch panel alone.
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It supports deep integration of 3D interactions and Augmented Reality features.
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Zero Layer UI and contextual interactions elevates the overall user experience.
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:
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Detailed Usability analysis of interactions and features.
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Competitive Research
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Usability improvements and suggestions
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Interaction design for a feature called eAssist
Detailed Usability Analysis


Competitive research and
Insights into UX


Understanding the users
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Conducted and gathered insights from user interview sessions.
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I deep dived into in-car UX and understood the main use cases.
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Created personas and scenarios to understand the context.

Example scenario:
On Route charging point and then head to office.
Key emotions: Anxiety and indecisiveness.

Key Screens for the
customer journey
Interaction designs and Visual designs
1
Getting into the car and head towards charging point

2
Gets an email from a client to meet up

3
Calls the client to decide the meeting plan.

4
Charging the car

5
"Hey Mercedes" for meeting point suggestions

6
Intelligent suggestions from car for meeting points

7
New optimised route from the car.
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Optimised charging suggestion from the car and related information. Relaxing theme suggestion.

9
Scenic route suggestion from the car

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