It is inspiring in this case presented by GM on how it employ contextual design method to create optimal user experience as an added value for its upscale car drivers. GM introduced Cadillac CUE, Cadillac User Experience, the new design and technical system for connectivity, control and convenience in the Cadillac XTS in 2012 Consumer Electronic Show.
The CUE team, made up of designers, engineers and software developers, used a consumer-focused methodology called Contextual Design. It’s a process in which interviewers immerse themselves into the lives of users to understand the most subtle aspects of how they use products, how they work around shortcomings, and how they’d wish for improvements.
So team members rode along with luxury car owners on daily commutes, on vacations and sometimes with families and groceries. The team constantly sketched their observations, and some of the observations were troubling, such as cell phones stuffed into cup holders for constant reference while driving.
The team members categorized thousands of observations, affixing them to a long wall at the General Motors Design Center in Warren, Mich. The CUE team would “walk the wall” to analyze driver frustrations, identify possible new capabilities, and look for common threads of where existing systems were failing or frustrating users. The team created eight distinct personas or driver archetypes that represented driver personalities, each with priorities for how to optimally use technology inside the car. It began to model what would represent system designs for all eight driver personas.
The team composed an extensive design and engineering specification manual that included more than 1,500 pages of storyboards, functions program wireframes and HMI (Human-machine Interface) state charts. Among the breakthroughs the CUE team developed: proximity sensing that minimizes the display when not in use; capacitive touch screen with haptic feedback; natural voice recognition; icon-based menu functions with home screen and customizable shortcut menu bars, and a concealed storage compartment behind the user interface. The haptic feedback gives users a pulsing sensation when the select menu items while capacitive touch screen allows for swipe and pinching gestures to move and resize items on the main screen.
To design for the future, the team makes the Linux-based CUE platform open up to developers. That will help ensure that CUE can stay ahead of changes in technology and remain relevant and useful throughout the automotive lifecycle.
Among CUE’s features are a vibrant 8-inch LCD capacitive touch main screen with icon-based menu, audio functions which include AM/FM/HD Radio and Sirius XM, along with iPod/MP3 connectivity and music library indexing across multiple devices. It also includes built-in 3D navigation with turn-by-turn, natural speech recognition and auto-fill location input.
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