Audi Entertain Vision

Timeline

24 Weeks
February - August 2019

Project type

Bachelor thesis project

My role

UX Design student trainee

Tools

Microsoft Project and Excel,
Adobe Suite, Unity, C#

Skills

Project Management, UX Research, UX Design, Interaction Design,
Unity Prototyping, Virtual Reality Prototyping

Outcome

bachelor thesis, requirements catalog, wireframe concept, interaction prototype and visual design

Audi Entertain

is a vision concept for the entertainment experiences of autonomous Audi vehicles

01 Overview

During the last semester of my bachelor studies, I got the chance to write my thesis in cooperation with the Audi Electronics Venture HMI team. The goal of my thesis was the elaboration and development of a holistic vision concept for the future entertainment experiences of autonomous Audi vehicles. The thesis was my biggest project so far and was graded with excellence. (1.0) A special thanks to my mentor at Audi, Dr. Stefan Mayer, the whole HMI team and my professor Ingrid Stahl!

What should we do

with the newly gained time?

02 Problem

It is only a matter of time until fully autonomous vehicles will be part of our daily lives. Now the question arises, with what will the people engage during this newly gained time on the road. On this topic, Audi conducted some research and found out that around 30% of the answers were related to Entertainment, yet there was no concrete concept for it so far.

Challenge accepted

It was quite a ride!

03 Challenge

Before this project, I mostly designed for specific hardware pieces. For example, if you design an app you know it will be running on a phone or tablet. Now with this project, I had no reference at all. I needed to create a prototype for a complete interface and operating system from scratch, for autonomous vehicles that aren’t even produced yet.

My motivation Post-It - "Just do it"

Follow the process

It is your friend

04 Process

The development of the Audi entertain vision is based on the user-centered design process. For a detailed overview of the steps and used methods of this project, the UCD process was divided into the different subdivisions below. The individual phases were carried out in an iterative pattern to further refine the respective results

Process steps

Project plan

Building the foundation

Analysis

05 Analysis

As a first step in the requirements analysis, several sub-analyses were carried out to gain a broad overview of the topic of entertainment for autonomous driving.

Context Analysis

Automated driving

Automated driving is classified into six levels in Europe according to SAE International. Only the last two levels 4 and 5 have importance for this project, because they allow the driver to fully engage with other things while driving, such as entertainment.

SAE International - Levels of automated driving

Context Analysis

The brand Audi

The entertainment vision concept is intended to reflect the Audi brand profile. The goal is to create a clear differentiation to other brands and stand out from the competition through it.

Entertainment & Experience

Interview findings have shown me that users mostly differentiate entertainment and experience form each other. For them, entertainment is related to passive reception of information. An experience, on the other hand, is related to active participation. I was looking for the intersection of those two and found out that entertainment can be an experience through Immersion and emotional engagement.

Target group analysis

To develop a user-friendly and suitable entertainment concept for the future Audi drivers, I need to have a precise understanding of the potential Audi Entertain target groups. With the use of the SIGMA and DELTA social milieu model and the beforehand acquired knowledge about the Audi brand, I could define three special target groups for my vision concept.

DELTA social milieu model - Audi Entertain target groups

Environmental analysis

I also took a detailed look at Audi’s current autonomous concept the Audi Aicon. The goal was to get a system and interaction wise reference, which should be used as inspiration for the entertain concept.

Audi Aicon interior interfaces

Benchmark Analysis

Lastly, I conducted a benchmark analysis to identify possible solutions from the competition. It is based on three sectors, each with an explicit focus on entertainment. The first sector was a dedicated automotive benchmark analysis. The second sector deals with rail transportation and the third with flight transportation.

Benchmark map automotive

Benchmark map railway and airway

Requirements catalog

small and simplified

06 Requirements

After synthesizing the gathered information, I was able to generate a comprehensive requirement backlog, which the Audi entertain vision should fulfill. Unfortunately, I can only show a very simplified overview of the most important requirements below.

Generating Ideas

Ideation

07 Ideation

To convert the knowledge into a concrete concept, the next step was an ideation. Firstly, I defined three different user personas that are characterized according to the Audi entertain target groups. Additionally, I made use of the sensation seeking scale by Marvin Zuckerman to achieve a clearer picture of what kind of entertainment activity each persona may prefer.

Persona Christian

Persona Kim

Double Persona George & Gill

Sensation Seeking Scale

Selecting Experiences

To come up with possible entertainment activities for each persona, we did a brainstorming session together in a team. Following we categorized the activities according to the Pine and Gilmore experience model in an affinity diagram and decided which activities to include inside the entertain concept.

Affinity map of brainstormed entertainment activities

Entertainment activity mapping for each persona according to Pine and Gilmore

Ordered activities for each persona according to Pine and Gilmore

Day in a life user stories

Concept structure

Creating a clear vision

08 The structure

After gathering a lot of ideas and insights throughout the analysis and ideation, I created the structure for the concept. It is put together by three display interfaces and a virtual reality glass. Special about this concept is the removable tablets inside each door. This allows both passengers to either enjoy entertainment on their own or interact with each other. Unfortunately, I can't provide any deeper information or visuals here.

Just some scribbles and sketches of the concept phase

Paper Prototyping

That rapid stuff

09 Paper and Evaluation

As the first conceptual step, I produced various paper prototypes of the Audi entertain concept. After rapidly reviewing and refining them, I decided to conduct a first usability testing with the Paper Prototype to see if the system and also the concept structure is going in the right direction.

Early sketches

Tablet paper prototyping

Windshield display prototyping

Usability testing

Digital Development

Building a digital interaction prototype

10 Digitalization, Development and Evaluation

After finishing the first testings, I refined the concept and digitalized everything as wireframes. After that, I built a first interactive prototype inside of Unity. I especially chose Unity because it offered me the needed tools to create this holistic entertainment concept. Especially important was to connect the different tablets, monitors and virtual reality applications over TCP-Sockets, so that each interface could interact with one another. I then integrated the whole concept inside a self-built car simulator and tested it again in a second usability testing.

Unity development tablet prototype

Writing my own unity client-server architecture

Unity development virtual reality use case

Unity development windshield prototype

Interaction prototype integrated in car simulator

Final setup

Improvised virtual reality setup

Just some of the needed technology

Visual Design

The look and feel

11 Design

After refining the wireframes according to the user feedback, I began thinking about how the concept would look and feel. One of the requirements was the personalization of the system. This should also be reflected in the UI design. Therefore, three different mood boards were created for each Persona, to get a visual reference in which way the design could be heading.

Lessons learned

It was a lot

12 Lessons learned

Through this project, I learned to organize myself in a better way. How to set up a project plan over several months and follow milestones was something I took away from it. Also wrapping your head around a concept that may be first accessible in 10 years and creating a tangible vision for it right now, was something I had to figure out at first. Developing and prototyping this holistic entertainment concept over several displays with an endless number of interconnections, different technologies, and various input modalities, also helped me to always have the bigger picture in mind.

Still curious?

Check out some of my other projects