Simply clever

Simply clever

Being a designer on multiple multidisciplinary teams for in-car apps,
I helped deliver value to thousands of customers. We enhanced the 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 designer.

DURATION

Nov 2021 – July 2023 (1y 8m)

CLIENT

Škoda Auto

PART OF MY JOB AT

Lighting Beetle*

MY ROLE

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

Have a look at Pay to Park- my team designed the in-car part.

LEARNING #1

User testing can be done even with little budget or time. It is fundamental for a better CX.

In our team, we treated opinions as hypotheses that must be tested. We quickly created scenarios, prototypes, recruited users, and run tests—often within a week. Testing early is key, as real insights come from users, not assumptions. This allowed us to move the design faster and contribute to better customer experience.

Over time, the value of this approach became clear—product teams even began asking for the “user-approved” label achieved via testing themselves.

Testing in car is the most authentic, but requires more set-up. For the apps used only when the car is stationary, we found out it was sufficient to test behind a desk.


Testing on chairs with a tablet was the best fit for rapid testing. This one was prototyped and executed in less than 6 hours.

LEARNING #2

Assure the quality by checking the developed version

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.

LEARNING #3

Collaborate with all important stakeholders to reduce last-minute changes

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

OTHER LEARNINGS

  • Preview the designs on your output device – We use infotainment screens or tablets because the interactions, resolution and size are different than on a laptop screen
  • Always visualise your ideas – instead of just talking about how we could design a flow or a screen, we quickly put it together. (Having a design system makes it even quicker.) Ideas visualised seem different than in our heads and this way we make decisions faster.
  • Design with the worst case in mind – ask the developers to send you an average and the longest exemplary data from the API. Prioritise for the most common case, so the designs look as good as possible, but make enough space for the worst case.
  • Try out translations to different languages – sometimes the English text might fit very nicely but translation to languages like German or Bulgarian doesn't.
  • Don't use ”/” in the frame names – fun thing but did you know that once you export a Figma frame with a backslash in its name, it exports it in a subfolder?

Source of the cover photo: Škoda Auto

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