Date: January 2024-May 2024

Role: UX and Product designer

This project had 4 people in total and tasks were divided up amongst us weekly. There was an overall general project manager, and the remaining task members all acted as designers, engineers and overall operations and client success managers. The scope of the project was massive and broad, so the design process was long (spanning around 5 months), and we worked our way through each design phase to get to our final solution

BMW wanted to understand more on how they could implement certain interfaces and solutions for people with disabilities, and how they could integrate these solutions with their existing softwares and flow.

Our project aims to identify and explore the challenges faced by individuals with 3 specific health conditions in their driving experiences. Through research, interviews, and analyze, we seek to develop solutions that improve accessibility and enhance their overall driving experience. The 3 specific disabilities are as follows: Mild Cognitive Impairment, Epilepsy, and Hearing Loss.

How can we make the driving experience better for individuals with MCI, Epilepsy, and Hearing loss. Each of these solutions will require different interviews, research, and finely tuned solutions.

The problem: Mild cognitive impairment (MCI) is the stage between the expected decline in memory and thinking that happens with age and the more serious decline of dementia.

Roughly 10% to 20% of people over age 65 have MCI

Some of the systems that are impaired by MCI are as follows:

(a) Visual object system

(b) Attention system

(c) Visual-spatial system

(d) Decision-making system

(e) Motor system

(a) Actionable warnings and Guidance

(b) Trip Planning

(c) AR navigation

BMW Co-Pilot: Your friend in a car

The system will provide voice assistance and gentle reminders to assist drivers with road confusions. This includes road signs, railroad crossings, intersections, shifting lanes etc. This is different from navigation/apple maps because it’s there to assist drivers in times of need. In addition, the system can directly be prompted if the user has a question.

How do we make sure that the voice system doesn’t startle them if users have forgotten to turn the button off. Need to make it clearer when the system needs to be prompted versus when it was start speaking automatically.

Short-term memory loss can affect individuals with MCI by reducing their efficiency in completing everyday tasks.

This feature will allow users to plan a trip beforehand – from ordering the list of destinations to setting the time of departure.

Families or friends can provide assistance remotely by setting up the scheduled trips for these individuals in the MyBMW app, this allows individuals with MCI to maintain some extent of independence.

This feature provides visual guidance to help users understand unfamiliar surroundings. Prevents wandering and reduce the risk of getting lost or disoriented. Reduced cognitive load associated with way-finding tasks. Assists and increase spatial awareness.

The problem: Despite 1/3 of them having a driver’s license, individuals with epilepsy, a neurological disorder causing unpredictable seizures, lack adequate car safety features. Seizures while driving can lead to loss of control of the vehicle, resulting in accidents, injuries, and even fatalities.

Seizures can cause:

(a) Loss of muscle control - shaking/twitching

(b) Confusion and Pain

(c) Anxiety and fear

Triggers:

(a) Drowsiness

(b) Stress

(c) Flashing lights/bright lights

Seizure detection and response system -- (SDRS)

Seizure detection through a brainwave-monitoring headrest:

The driver’s headrest contains an EEG (electroencephalogram) that detects incoming seizures using a brainwave-monitoring AI algorithm.

Auto-Pullovers:

If the car detects that a seizure is occurring, it will initiate self-driving mode and automatically pulls over for the safety of the driver and surrounding vehicles.

Emergency Contacts:

Emergency services and/or friends/family members will be contacted in the event of a seizure occurring during the drive.

A warning will appear on the infotainment system and provides the option to deactivate any automated responses from the vehicle.

Inclusive design is very important. Seizure triggers and symptoms vary greatly person to person.

The first design is not always the best design. Brainwave monitoring is much more accurate and effective for seizure detection than tracking head movement (original concept).

It is important to give users autonomy and freedom, such as the option to deactivate the automatic pull-over/emergency contact responses.

The problem: Hearing loss can occur both early and late and life, and can be caused by both environmental and genetic factors. However, it is especially prevalent in older adults, and can make driving a challenging and stressful process.

Difficult or impossible to use road noise to detect nearby vehicles, necessitates constantly scanning mirrors.

Visual overstimulation from scanning the road, GPS, and passengers simultaneously.

Displays like Tesla’s are helpful, but not consistently accurate enough to depend on.

Pro Scanning Gauge Cluster:

This product is the result of user testing different iterations of two prototypes. These prototypes were primarily seats that would provide haptic feedback, and the result of testing was that vibration feedback was not a viable way to reduce the demands on the driver’s visual attention.

This was because users were not able to detect the source of the vibration precisely enough for the system to effectively convey information about nearby vehicles. Additionally, drivers lacked confidence in the car’s ability to accurately sense and relay information about nearby vehicles, causing them to revert to their normal mirror scan.

We started off the design process crafting a spreadsheet to map out the entire project timeline and agenda. This was marked with deliverables, people involved, and specific dates. This would be the overall broad guideline for the entire project's pace and scope to keep us on track.

by conducting some basic desk research. Since it was a topic we were quite unfamiliar with, we wanted to see what pre-existing solutions were available to people with disabilities. Each of us conducted this based on the respective disabilities we assigned ourselves.

Once we conducted broad research on existing solutions, we tried to look for the main insights into the product based on the solutions that already existed. Using these insights, we tried to revise the solutions to better fit the needs of our client.

We then categorised the type and depth of solution to broadly understand the kinds of solutions that we would want to pivot into later in the ideation phase.

For each of our disabilities, we curated a list of pain points and possible solutions under each pain point. This was the start of our ideation phase. We had two main brainstorm sessions for ideation and pooled together all of our collective research and ideas. We then streamlined this to only reflect the best and most applicable ideas.

After conducting our two rounds of secondary research and fleshing out our ideas, we crafted detailed and thorough product roadmaps for each of our disabilities.

These product roadmaps included broadly what the feature/solution would do, how exactly it would work, storyboarding/mapping out customer journey, and a testing plan.

We then crafted each of our individual solutions and built testing plans to test our prototypes. These testing plans included number of participants, how we would conduct the test, timeline for testing, as well as what we hoped to learn from testing/insights we wanted from the process.

Once we tested our prototypes, we collected feedback from the first iteration and revised each of our prototypes to land on the final design. Key findings from each of these testing results are recorded above along with the respective solutions.

Actionable Warnings & Gentle Reminders -

Could intuitively understand what a user needed more help with and automatically respond as it understands more about the users cognitive and emotional ability → better recognition + integration technologies

Trip Planning -

How can the feature be improved for MCI users without families/friends?

AR Navigation -

Where is the middle ground for the varying opinions regarding the accuracy of technology and its guidance?

How can existing mental models be leveraged to minimize users' learning curve with the technology?

Explore the prototyping of the EEG headrest

Conduct physical usability testing using driving simulation

Refine seizure warning and attention gauge prototypes based on physical testing

Test effect of pro-scanning gauge cluster vs. existing iDrive

Determine effect on glance behavior using eye tracking, and performance on complex driving tasks

Survey participants to test confidence level with the system (is it accurate and dependable enough to be useful)

Determine what camera angle users find easiest to use and most confidence inspiring

This project was incredibly challenging due to the scope and broadness of the project. One of my personal challenges was the ability to find enough people to interview and base our research on. It was difficult to find people with these disabilities who were willing to speak to us and share their experiences.

Hence, we found that a lot of our solutions were being based on mostly secondary research and existing solutions. In the future, all our solutions could be better revised if we had access to many patients with these disabilities.

Additionally, this was the first time any of us had worked on such a long project with a fixed group and assigned roles. It was difficult at first to assign tasks, establish a chain of command and get things done in an orderly fashion. At the start, deadlines were being missed and work was being split unevenly.

Later on, however, we created a routine and strict timeline that everyone followed to make sure we completed everything on time as well as had almost no miscommunication between us.

Another thing that made the project challenging was the broadness and overall scope of the project. BMW left the project quite open and wanted us to focus on 3 different disabilities. The project was therefore quite large as each of us had to focus on one disability, compared to other teams who were working together on one solution. There was not a lot of time for the project, overall 4 months, and we found that a lot of the solutions could only be so detailed as to not go over the deadline.