Imagining the Future of Automotive
COMPANY: QUALCOMM AUTOMOTIVE TEAM
ROLE: DESIGN STRATEGY, CONCEPT DESIGN, INTERACTION DESIGN
TEAM: CYNTHIA SMITH, DAN ERVIN
TIME: 6 MONTHS
The Challenge
Design a cohesive product vision and compelling near future automotive experiences for the 5G concept car to demonstrate the value of Qualcomm’s latest automotive tech to key partners and customers.
Creating Alternate Product Visions
We launched our engagement with the automotive team with a week long design sprint to create a product vision for Qualcomm's automotive products. Along with another researcher and two designers, we conducted background research, a competitive analysis, and stakeholder interviews to understand the problems and opportunities facing the automotive landscape and determine what role Qualcomm should play.
Next, we turned our insights into design questions and brainstormed different possible product visions. The outcome of the sprint was three alternate product visions in storyboard format encompassing new human-centered features and use cases for existing Qualcomm technologies. Working closely with product management and marketing, we decided to focus on the following design question for the CES concept car: what will the in-car experience be when cars can drive themselves?
We used storyboards to communicate our product visions to product management and marketing leads.
Designing the In-Car Experience
In the next phase, we collaborated closely with an industrial designer as well as mechanical, hardware, and software engineers to realize our concept work and design an interactive in-car experience for Qualcomm's 5G concept car to be demoed at CES 2018. I collaborated with a visual/interaction designer to create initial concepts, interaction models, wireframes, and interactive prototypes for the main infotainment screens, back passenger screens, and the companion mobile app.
Impact
The Qualcomm 5G concept car at CES successfully illustrated Qualcomm's technologies and value proposition by demonstrating a highly personalized, seamless in-car entertainment experience to our key customers and industry partners in a dynamic and engaging way.
"A heartfelt thanks on behalf of the entire automotive team for the fantastic demonstration vehicle you guys created for CES. You outdid yourself this year by delivering to what was a concept just 6 months ago. Our ability [...] to experiment with new concepts and technologies just blows the minds of our customers and partners."
— Nakul Duggal, VP Product Management