For the past year and a half I've been on a design team for the Škoda Auto infotainment apps. These enhance in-car experience by for example allowing drivers to pay for parking or manage work meetings and messages easily on the road. As most of this work is under an NDA, I’ll focus on sharing how it helped me grow as a UX designer.
individual:
UX design, IA, competitor analysis
with a team:
user testing, user interviews, quantitative surveys, data analytics, protopersona development, UI design, contributing to the design system, client cultivation, quality assurance
Nov 2021 - July 2023 (1y 8m)
Have a look at Pay to Park- my team designed the in-car part.
In our team we believe our opinions are hypotheses which need to be verified. That's why we test all of our designs and then iterate them.
We learned to prepare hypotheses, scenario, prototype, recruit and execute the testing in less than 1 week. The earliest you can test in the project the better, because you learn from users not your hypotheses.
However, sometimes there is only little time or budget and many teams ditch the testing altogether. In those moments we test at least with our friends, families or even non-designer colleagues, if they match the target group.
After some time, seeing how useful it is, having the label user-approved is something product teams started asking for themselves.
Testing in car is the most authentic, but requires more set-up. For the apps used only when the car is stationary, it is sufficient to test behind a desk.
Testing on chairs with a tablet is the best fit for rapid testing. This one was prototyped and executed in less than 6 hours.
Creating perfect designs and documentation doesn't guarantee that the developed app will match them exactly. Technical restrictions we didn't know about or developer errors can cause differences. To ensure quality, we test the developed version and report functional and visual improvements. For example putting a loading screen instead of displaying a screen without text which loads later.
Me checking the code, app design and interactions, and writing a report in Figma.
Regular syncs with the product team and developers are essential during the design process. They allow for collective decision-making and validating the feasibility of the design. Sometimes, what seems simple to us is challenging to develop, while other times what's overlooked as difficult is suggested as an easy solution by the developers. This approach reduces the need for last-minute design changes after the design handover.
Collaborating in a workshop with devs, PO, BO, marketing, and other designers
Source of the cover photo: Škoda Auto
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