Vehicle Access

Approach and Deliverables

I was brought in as a consultant when the development on this feature was in the stage of its inception. I was tasked with leading the development of profiles feature along with the HMI of the hybrid powertrain and the firmware over the air update features. The system design specification and the UX specification for the MVP needed to be delivered by the end of March 2019

Understanding the Goals

P16 interior is a departure from the previous McLaren models. It has been heavily decluttered and the active dynamics panel has been removed. The active dynamics panel served two purposes, one was the let the user quickly select the preferred driving setup, and the second was to make sure the car always starts in the default mode to comply with the legislation and the emission requirements.

We not only needed a way to have the same functionality without the active dynamics panel but enhance the user experience as well.

This change presented us with the opportunity to redesign the entire vehicle access user journey

Understanding the audience

• They are near top of their profession and appreciate the value of hard work

  These are high net worth individuals who have built up their own business, or are at the top of organisations. They are still actively involved in running their business, have a tremendous work ethic and are extremely time poor.

• They prize what little free time they have

  They treasure rewarding and treating themselves. They are unwilling to compromise this free time and are very demanding on the products and services they invest in.

• They have high expectations

  They have high expectations of themselves and their own performance, and place those same expectations on the products and companies they interact with. They demand, and expect, the best for their money.

• They expect to be valued

  They recognise good and poor quality of service is as they encounter it daily in their business life. They look to be treated as valued customers during all interactions with a brand. 

• For them, it’s usually an emotional purchase

  There is little rationality involved which means there is no classically defined “purchase journey”. Decisions are governed by how the car (and brand) make them feel rather than anything more practical. If it was a rational purchase they’d buy an SL63.

Three Types of Potential Customers

Pain Points

During our research and benchmarking of the user journey of our legacy cars, we identified 4 key pain points during vehicle access

• High cluster boot-up times

  The ADI (cluster) was booting up too late. i.e the customer would open the door gets settled and start driving the car, and then the customer would get a prompt that the comfort entry is available

• Disengaging comfort entry on engine start

  The safety systems were too cautious about the movement during the comfort entry. When the user activates comfort entry by pulling the lower left-hand stalk, it would take 2-3 seconds for the comfort entry to complete. During which time if the user starts the vehicle, the entire comfort entry system disengages

• No user detection

  There were no profiles on the system. For example, if Richard Hammond gets in the car and sets the cabin to his liking, and then, Jeremy Clarkson, who’s substantially taller than Hammond gets in the car and activates the comfort entry, he would be squished. And there was no way to stop the process if the user is panicking.

• Removal of the active panel

  Setting up a McLaren, especially on a track day, is a complex ritual by design. User sits in the car, selects the powertrain and handling mode, turns off the ESC, switches the car in the manual mode, presses the active button, puts his foot on break and starts the vehicle. The removal of the active panel meant that the user would have to repeat this ritual, and every single new ignition cycle.
  

Information Architecture for Ignition State 2 (Car Unlocked)

We started with brainstorming on the ignition state 2 ie when the car is unlocked, to flesh out all the states and possibilities, it was a especially challenging task, since the driver could press the start button, open or close the vehicle door, select a restricted profile like guest or valet, or adjust the cabin configuration like mirror seats etc. We had to define the flow in such a way that all the possibilities and the permutations and combinations of both the driver display and the centre display were covered and our information architecture needed to be watertight for the development