MBUX Infotainment System
Mercedes-Benz S-Class Infotainment System & EQS Hyperscreen:
Media, Sound, Multi-Seat Sharing experiences.
As the UX manager, I communicated with all stakeholders on a daily basis, ensuring a common understanding of the processes, guidelines, deliverables and provided the Entertainment Team with a smooth working process.
As the UX Designer I created UX concepts, specification & documentation, alongside a cross-disciplinary team of UX designers, UI designers, text experts, software developers and engineers.
My role
UX Team Manager,
UX Designer
Client
Daimler
Year
2018–2021
The Goal
Adapt Media & Sound UX Concepts to the Multi-Seat Sharing experience.
Design Individual Sound Setup feature.
The Problem
The user experience was only available on the head unit. A different experience needed to be designed for the passenger display, 2 rear seat units and the rear seat remote control.
My Responsibilities
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gathered requirements (from concept team and engineers) and created technical UX specification
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Developed conceptual ideas for complex In-Vehicle Information and
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determine scenarios, use cases, information architecture for new products and features
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Served as the link between the concept team and the software development team
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Worked with an interdisciplinary team that included other UX designers, UI designers, software developers and project management.
Challenges
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Hardware limitations
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Driver distraction
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Multiple music providers: Apple, Spotify, Amazon, Tidal,
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Many markets, international market - Many cross-discipline teams: UX Concept, UX Specification & Documentation, text, UI, engineers (functional owners), developers -
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Creating new experience for the displays other than the headunit, would often trigger changes to the experience in the headunit too.
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Privacy in multi-seat experience. Stacking (audio-source)
My Approach
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While gathering requirements on a feature I first researched existing patterns, cross-domain dependencies, hardware limitations, driver distraction implications, international market implications,
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Then, I used personas and user journey maps for each of them to uncover pain points, opportunities, throughout the user’s journey. Parents and children, driver and VIP is one set of personas. Additionally, I would use role-based personas such as: driver, passenger, and rear-seat passenger.
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While mapping out the journeys it was crucial to note that the journey starts well before the user even approaches the car or parks the car and includes breaks and stops.
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Then I created the UX Concept, which consisted of wireflows, complete with screens, states, conditions, decisions, dependencies, entry/exit points from/to other parts of the system.
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I pre-groomed the concept with engineers and developers to check feasibility.
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Then, I presented the UX Concept in a cross-domain design sync with the rest of the design team to check for consistency and cross-domain dependencies.
Result
The Entertainment module (Radio, Media, Sound Settings, Multi-Seat Sharing Experience) of the infotainment system was developed on the basis of my technical UX specification that consisted of wireframes, user flowcharts with states, conditions, transitions, formats, based on user needs and safety restrictions.
Aside from that I managed a team of 3 UX designers and coordinated efforts with 5 other teams (UX, UI, translation, engineering and implementation) ensuring a smooth development process.
The Mercedes-Benz S-Class came out in September 2020 and I couldn't wait to go test it out!
