Situation
The Family Mobility Project started as a series of workshops with Honda engineers, the Honda Research team, and Co Grow Lab.
I led a small team through the early product rapid prototyping process and prepared the content for use in focus-testing the product experience concepts.
Task
I formulated a preliminary product vision and production window out of the initial design exercise, powered by input from the engineering and research teams.
Honda didn’t have a large budget to conceptualize a fully-functioning system - and an opportunity in the Odyssey product roadmap had arisen.
Honda needed to design and concept test a system that could be supported by the emerging IVI (in-car-infotainment) system - before they could commit more budget and time to developing new software to match the target upgrade package and devices.
Early hardware/software specs and Honda’s strategic objectives provided insights on audience, pain points, capabilities and Odyssey Model Vision.
In order to meet the lean budget and timeline requirements, a team of 3 tackled the conceptualization as a series of embedded design sprints - building storyboards and mid-fidelity wireframes of key product moments.
This method would offer a testable narrative and concept for focus groups in a matter of weeks - not months.
Actions
I developed design themes, proposed them, and aligned with Honda's audience and product features.
The product identified family outings between suburbs and urban centers as particularly painful for young families - a key buyer - and these trips were the most frequent pain point.
Helpful tech that serves families is the level of differentiating “luxury” that Honda wins their category with.
I developed an end-to-end narrative with Honda leadership and our team of a UX designer and a storyboarder. We iteratively built up a product and user story, with various jobs-to-be-done by the system, helping our persona family overcome the challenges of a family trip.
A mix of mid-fidelity system wireframes accompanied the story in the boards. I also built a demo voice over for the product leader to use when showing the demo to others.
We made it critical to the product story that each user was able to feel heroic during the trip selection, planning and travel experience. We designed a platform that helped parents quickly and easily find Honda-Family-vetted trips with tips.
I designed many aspects of the product system, including the "zoom out" view of booked and unbooked events across time and space.
Safety features like in-car video and seat-specific audio communication were used creatively to imagine the Odyssey coming to the rescue for a grumpy family stuck in traffic.
Trip-planning, time-management, real-time traffic routing and trusted help from Honda community wisdom were some of the key problems that drove the design work.
Results
The concept tested favorably with Honda families in focus groups. The concept moved on to the next steps in feature vetting and development.
Honda is still working on integrating these features into production models - with Dream Drive featured at CES in 2019 - and in Sony/Honda’s collaboration with the AFEELA.
