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
Develop a cohesive product vision and engaging near-future automotive experiences for the 5G concept car, showcasing the value of Qualcomm’s latest automotive technology to key partners and customers.
Creating Alternate Product Visions
We began our collaboration with the automotive team by conducting a week-long design sprint aimed at creating a product vision for Qualcomm's automotive products. Alongside another researcher and two designers, we performed background research, a competitive analysis, and stakeholder interviews to identify the challenges and opportunities in the automotive landscape, which helped us determine Qualcomm's potential role.
Subsequently, we translated our insights into design questions and brainstormed various potential product visions. The sprint culminated in three alternative product visions presented in storyboard format, featuring new human-centered features and use cases for existing Qualcomm technologies. Collaborating closely with product management and marketing, we focused our efforts on the following design question for the CES concept car: What will the in-car experience be like 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 worked closely with an industrial designer and a team of mechanical, hardware, and software engineers to bring our concept to life and design an interactive in-car experience for Qualcomm's 5G concept car, demoed at CES 2018. I partnered with a visual and interaction designer to develop 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 effectively showcased Qualcomm's technologies and value proposition by dynamically demonstrating a highly personalized and seamless in-car entertainment experience to key customers and industry partners.
"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