Marquardt

Smart Access App

The Smart Access App is a modular digital key platform that uses UWB, NFC and Bluetooth communication technologies. It allows for mobile vehicle settings and sharing the digital key in various settings such as family & friends, carpooling, rentals, easy delivery or fleet management.

Role

I was the Lead UX Designer & Researcher and collaborated with strategy, product, and development throughout the project cycle. My core responsibilities included researching the problem space, ideating concepts, preparing and performing a bigger picture workshop, leading the solution sketching, wireframing, delivering a high-fidelity prototype and concept validation.

Methods

Competitive & Comparative Analysis, Stakeholder Interviews, Affinity Mapping, Persona building, Journey Mapping, User Stories & Flow, Usability Testing

Tools

Paper Sketching, Figma, Miro, Zeplin, Notion, Protopie, Jira, Confluence

Timeline

December 2020 – March 2021

The challenge

To reconcile the various requirements and use cases beyond keyless functionality. Sharing the digital key with family members or third party services, personalize vehicle settings for different users, driver localization and enhanced security. In summary, to maximize the user’s feeling of flexibility and security at the same time.

The solution

A clean and neat user interface, with features adapting to the proximity of the car owner to their vehicle. Depending if the user is “out of range”, “connected” or “in car” , the interface will display the most important features and is therefore tailored to the needs of the user in a specific moment.

The design process

Discover

This phase is important to understand the context and the status quo.

  • Competitor Analysis
  • Desk Research

Define

Research findings are synthesized to define the Bigger Picture and identify the users' problems

  • Personas
  • Use Cases
  • User Journey Map

Design

An iterative, collaborative phase of creating possible solutions that can be tested.

  • Ideation
  • Sketching
  • User Flows
  • Wireframing
  • Prototyping

Deliver

Validating and testing with stakeholders and users until its final touches.

  • Expert Testing
  • Expert Interviews

Discover

In the discovery phase we had to get our head around exciting technologies such as UWB, NFC and BLE.

We discussed questions of security and flexibility, performance and limitations, benefits and risks and got familiar with the specifications of the CCC (Car Connectivity Consortium). We also looked deeper into the use of digital car keys in the global automotive market.

Define

During a Bigger Picture Workshop with strategists, designers and stakeholders we collaboratively developed the problem framing, defined possible proto-personas, and identified use cases. Based on our previous costumer research we went in full depth on understanding the users’ wants, needs and requirements regarding a digital car key.

Soon we realized that the amount of functionalities offered by the technology combined with the proto-personas’ requirements is multifaceted and challenging to be placed in one application without comprising its usability.

Design

During an ideation session with designers and innovation strategists we created different solution-sketches. Our focus was the users’ need for flexibility and control over the vehicle. The digital car key should ‘open up’ new possibilities in the vehicle usage and enhance the car owners’ experience.

The sketches provided a fruitful basis for our first prototype. We decided that by means of intelligent tiered levels of complexity the adaptive user interface would allow for targeted user flows and a smooth usability without restricting the range of functionalities.

Deliver

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Marquardt