Xenos

Designing a playful experience for Electric Vehicles (EVs)

Parts I Led

UX Research blah blah

Project Context

Timeline: 10 weeks

Team: Alex Lansing, Paige Smyth, Kaustubh Lahiri, Palka Dhirawani

Tools Used

dScout

Figma

FigJam

Xenos, an automotive manufacturer, is a fictional client created for the purpose of our Interaction Design class. Since the learning outcomes of this class were experience design, and we only had 10 weeks, the initial research and problem statement was provided by the client (aka professors).

Looking for a designer to help bring your vision to life? I would love to hear from you. Currently taking on new website design and brand projects from August 2023.

Business Context

Consumer adoption of electric vehicles is gaining momentum, but XENOS has lagged in the EV space. As an incumbent, XENOS is struggling to innovate.

At a time when electric vehicles are rapidly changing the overall automotive experience and as customer expectations continue to increase…

How might we create new digital interactions between car and driver that connect life's grand moments?

View pitch deck

Sprint 1

secondary research, idea brainstorming

To navigate the initial ambiguity of a new project, I like to collect both qual and quant data by learning about the domain of work, exploring what is currently being done in the market, and getting scrappy about observing users' interactions.

We carried out field research at the Chicago Auto Show to observe how people interact with EVs, what are points of interest and confusion, and understanding what other companies are doing in this space.

Opportunity

From our secondary research, we realized that people spend a lot of time behind the wheel - more than an hour daily. Almost half of Americans (45%) go to their car to have a private moment to themselves.

We wanted to make this time spent more relaxing and enjoyable, so we decided to build on the themes of 'rest' and 'play'.

To narrow down the scope for brainstorming, we focused on the archetype of "The Outdoor Enthusiast".

Sprint 2

LOW-FIDELITY PROTOTYPES, VALIDATION, ITERATION

We shortlisted 3 ideas by voting among ourselves and conducted the first round of user interviews to get feedback on what they value, identify potential barriers of interaction, and iterate on the concepts to better suit their needs.

Writing value proposition hypothesis and opportunity brief for each idea

Creating visual stimuli (storyboards, low-fidelity prototypes) for concept testing

Defining research questions and recruitment criteria to interview 4 EV users through dScout

Based on the feedback, we narrowed down to our final idea - Surround Snap.

Surround Snap

An EV camera feature that allows the driver to take pictures of their surroundings with the click of a single button.

Sprint 3

high-fidelity prototyping, pitch deck

Challenges

Making tradeoffs between ease of use and personalization

Before moving to high-fidelity designs, we had to decide on the capture angle and number of photos, which influenced whether we stuck with our single-button feature or opted for more steps.

Approach

Before moving to high-fidelity designs, we had to decide on the capture angle and number of photos, which influenced whether we stuck with our single-button feature or opted for more steps.

Approach

Before moving to high-fidelity designs, we had to decide on the capture angle and number of photos, which influenced whether we stuck with our single-button feature or opted for more steps.

To narrow down the scope for brainstorming, we focused on the archetype of "The Outdoor Enthusiast".