Client
Ford

Sector
Motor Company

My role
Lead/Product designer
UI Designer

Year
2022-2023

OVERVIEW

Ford Motor Co (Ford) is an automotive company, which designs, manufactures, markets and services a full line of cars, trucks, sport utility vehicles and electrified vehicles. Ford is launching a brace of new electric crossovers developed with VW. They’re the two e-SUVs depicted far right in this teaser shot below. The two vehicles on the left are the all-electric Puma and the Mustang Mach-E. The first has just been revealed, and it’s called the Explorer. Ford has chosen the globally popular crossover bodystyle to drive its EV expansion; buyers are lapping up this genre in every territory, making it a safer industrial bet. Ford has already confirmed a fully electric Puma will join the range alongside a pair of new crossover EVs by 2024, as it rolls out nine electric vehicles within two years. It has also pledged to go carbon-neutral by 2035.

STRATEGY

I was working on several design projects for Ford, such as the E-commerce path and connectivity user journey. The challenge here was to create a new experience for the customer around the discovery of their new electric vehicles, design a new journey for the user to get access to the reservation stage in just a few clicks and to stay informed about the product. Whilst this objective was to create a new digital explorer experience, I focused on evolving the Ford visual language so as to ensure the new concept remained consistant with the Ford Design System. It was clear from the client brief that the launch of this new car line needed to reflect a new future for Ford in electric vehicles. As a result my strategy was to convey this message of a new era of innovation and technological advancement to the customer.

MY ROLE

As Lead/UI Designer, I helped the business through their digital transformation, identifying both user and business needs, and developing user experience & interface towards its future digital experience. My role was also to collaborate directly with the design team, product managers, developers, and business stakeholders to deliver premium experiences for users. In addition I have designed modules to show all the key features with several design interactions throughout the page including a registration and reservation user journey.

RESEARCH

I was involved in the research process by studying the market that helped creating the concept for the design but also an user experience & interface guideline.

DESIGN

As a concept, the user will navigate each feature as a chapter of a story for a seamless journey. But also let the customer see the vehicle from all angles. With agreed landing points to highlight specific areas, the customer can scroll around the vehicle, catching new angles as they move. The environment never locks, feel real and immersive.

I was also responsible for ensuring the accessibility of the design. The UI elements and components are used within their experiences adhere to the same standards. For example, the CTAs that exist in the library are accessible on a dark or light background or text needs to be readable on a texture background.

unified visual language

In this process of creating a new design system, I have to design a visual language that maintains design consistency and should be reusable components shorten time to market and simplify repetitive tasks. A good design system helps developers understand the logic behind design decisions and helps to create a more cohesive product. It speeds up the design process and allows designers more time for experimentation.

As part of the design, I needed to achieve a design accessibility. The UI elements in the library pass WCAG 2.2 AA standards for colour contrast, screen readers and everything in between.

Conclusion

Being given the responsibility and freedom to lead this project, it has given me confidence in my ability to own a process and bring a product to life. I emerged myself in the testing side of things and having taken charge of briefings, observed sessions and collated data, watching how the researchers conducted themselves and ran the sessions was really insightful. The challenge on this project was also to work with different countries on the content and meet their standard. In addition to the ‘loading page’ as we have a numerous amount of videos, I have to work with the teams slow loading videos/contents on the page and for the user to be able to get access to the features/informations without creating any frustration.