Smartrip: Electric Vehicle Route Planning
A human-machine inteface(HMI) design project to provide a smarter & all-in-one trip-planning experience for electric vehicle owners.
Project Type
Academic Group Project
Time
2022
Tools
Figma
Role
Overview
Problem & Solution
Problem: Electric vehicles (EVs) are gaining popularity due to their environmental advantages and technological progress. However, long charging times, limited range, and a lack of accessible charging stations are significant barriers to broader adoption. These factors cause range anxiety and inconvenience, deterring the transition to EVs.
Solution: From a user experience design standpoint, our thorough market research, competitive analysis, and user interviews have led us to propose a holistic approach to enhance the EV charging experience. This includes strategically placing charging stations en route to destinations, enabling spot reservations, offering entertainment options during charging waits, sending reminders for vehicle retrieval, and synchronizing information across various platforms.
Our solution aims to streamline the EV charging process, making it more convenient and user-friendly through the addition of intuitive features and enhanced information accessibility.
Outcome
What is Smartrip?
Overview
Process
Discover the context
Competitor Analysis
To better understand the market, the existing features and potential opportunities for Smartrip, we looked at the following competitive products.
Here is the summary of our insights.
Discover the context
User Interview
We interviewed 8 EV drivers and asked questions about their daily and short-trip driving habits and preferences for longer journeys. We also explored additional challenges and overall expectations regarding EV route planning and charging through follow-up questions.
Define the problem
User Persona
Based on the information gathered through interviews, we developed one user personas to dive into user needs, behaviors, goals, and pain points.
How might we break down barriers to EV adoption by providing a seamless, personalized charging experience through a comprehensive in-car application?
Develop the Idea
Brainstorming Solutions
Based on the main pain points found through previous research, our group brainstormed multiple solutions and filtered the most effective ones.
Develop the Idea
User Journey Map
To develop a design solution that caters to users' needs, we created a user journey map to critically analyze and deeply understand the user's experience and look for opportunities for improvement.
Hence, we started to ideate on how to create a holistic EV charging experience, which includes strategically placing charging stations en route to destinations, enabling spot reservations, offering entertainment options during charging waits, sending reminders for vehicle retrieval, and synchronizing information across various platforms.
Develop the Idea
User Flow
Develop the Idea
Wireframes+Prototyping+Iterations
Because it was a rather complicated user flow, the design of wireframes iterated a lot.
For instance, here is how the home page evolved.
We also developed multiple rapid prototyping for quick user testing to better understand users' behaviors and make informed design choices.
This is the flow prototype of customized route planning with charging options.
This is an alternative flow where user can edit waypoints.
This is the comprehensive charging flow from arriving to the charging station to get back to the car when charging finishes.
After several rounds of testing and iterations, we finalized the wireframes of critical pages and started to work on visual design,
Deliver the solution
Design System
Deliver the solution
Final Design
Use Case 1: Strategically placing charging stations en route to destinations
Use Case 2: Arrive at the charging station and start charging
Other important screeens
