Ford Motor Company

Working at an agency, with Ford as my client, means limitations on what I can share related to work in progress. However, the following case study will review the evolution of the online update process for Ford’s SYNC (in-vehicle) operating software and Maps navigation software. This study will review the prior live state of the European and North American experiences and my human centered design approach to bridge the two disparate experiences into one cohesive, global experience. The retired experiences were public facing, as are the newly designed and launched experience pages live on Ford.com today.

• Combining two disparate market experiences under one global design system

• Understanding the various generations and versions of software updates and how those affected the customer journey

• Partnering with subject matter experts to identify all outcomes a user could encounter while understanding the limitations of dated software and dated update delivery parameters

• Truly prioritizing the customer journey in a process that, in practice, is confusing, redundant and frustrating for users

APPROACH

• Current state user flow analysis by market

• Research synthesis of Ford.com user feedback

• MoSCoW mapping and feature prioritization matrix

• Wireframe design

• Weekly stakeholder reviews

• Usability testing (wireframes and high fidelity)

• Managing handoff to CRUX partner to apply global brand system to wireframes

• Embedded UX team reviews within development sprints and planning

PROCESS OVERVIEW

This UX project was initiated by Ford leadership. The business objective was to create a new experience that could fold in the disparate experiences between Europe and North America to bring them both under the Ford Global Own design system.

To our benefit Ford had prioritized, through the support of VMLY&R, creating a comprehensive design system across their various digital properties. In so doing some areas of consideration, such as accessibility and standardization of visual assets and components, was managed through the design team in charge of the system and a team of accessibility compliance experts.

Our goal was to not only unify the two experiences visually but to improve upon the clarity, simplicity, and process of accessing updates across all generations of SYNC software packages. The challenge in this area was that delivery of updates could come in any configuration of updating at a dealership or via USB, WiFi or Ford Power-Up Over the Air Updates depending upon SYNC generation.

SYNC currently has four live generations of software (along with multiple subsequent updates released within each generation) spanning a decade of vehicles and models. This clarity and learnability considerations, related to a heuristic value approach, made dealing with this issue a critical point to focus our design with an empathetic approach.

HYPOTHESIS & ASSUMPTIONS

Our hypothesis centered around how might we enable seamless updates across all generations of SYNC users. With that in mind we were working with the following assumptions.

• Users find the update process confusing

• Users want a simple and straightforward process for updating their SYNC and Maps

• Users don’t always know which version their vehicle is operating (affecting their ability to download the correct software package)

• Users don’t understand that SYNC and Maps require different steps to download and update

THE RESEARCH

Research was at the forefront of this process. Unlike traditional methodology of interviews or surveys I leveraged existing data collected on Ford.com customer feedback. To do this, and create a large enough sample size, I collected 5 weeks work of collected data. The data was sorted in expansive spreadsheets. To collect the right data I had to manually search in Excel to find all instances of key words related to the SYNC experience and capture the user feedback related to those terms.

Luckily, there were plenty of customer inputs clearly stating problems, frustrations and a few successes users encountered in their efforts to update through Ford.com.

Additional research included studying the two current state flows for North America and the EU as well as generating a list of key insights derived from through research synthesis.

THE DESIGN

FEATURE PRIORITIZATION

Although a Ford directive for UX was to always design mobile first that wasn’t optimal for this experience. The reason for that was that upwards of 80% of users would have to download the updates to a USB device to then load into their vehicle. Mobile users, as a result, had to be redirected to visit the site via desktop or laptop to complete the process.

There were a few key elements intended to create an easier experience for users, including:

PRIMARY FEATURES

• A vehicle “Card” set apart from the process flow to give current state awareness to customers. Information in this card included the users’ VIN, current SYNC generation, SYNC update version (if applicable), current Maps generations, Maps update version (if available) and update release notes.

• VIN entry or Login to pull back-end data to inform future steps available to the user based on installed SYNC/Maps generations and available updates.

• A cascading, numbered series of steps, instructions and content based on what software update delivery methods were available to their SYNC generations (could be any combination of WiFi, USB, Over the Air or Dealership pulled from API call)

• A quick links column under the vehicle card to direct users to frequently accessed articles and resources related to SYNC and Maps

• A FAQ section relaying answers to the most common questions identified in research synthesis

USER TESTING

Using UserZoom.com I set up two rounds of tests. First, we looked at the wireframes performance which across the board was relatively successful in terms of scenario and task completion. There were a few areas of improvement, for example users had difficulty activating the link on the new version update language in the card to access release notes for that version. I made a few design tweaks and added some contextual language which improved the success rate when we launched the high fidelity tests.

After a few tweaks to the wireframes I handed off the files to my CRUX partner to apply the Ford identity and other high fidelity visual elements. We then tested again to document success and improvements.