BMW Infotainment
iDrive & Personal Intelligent Assistant
Introduction
Background
Industry: BMW of North America,
Premium Automotive Infotainment, Voice RecognitionProject: BMW iDrive & BMW Intelligent Personal Assistant
Product Line: 2015-2021 BMW Vehicles
My Roles
iDrive Requirements & Language Manager
Product Development Engineer - Head Unit: Voice & UI Lead
my skills
Conversation Design, Localization, Technical Writing & Data Privacy Transparency, UX Wireframe & Prototyping, Debugging, QA, Cross-Functional Teamwork, Project Management
THE ProDUCT
BMW’s iDrive is an in-car navigation and entertainment system. User interaction can be in the form of a dial, touch, gesture, or voice.
BMW Digital Cockpit
BMW’s Live Digital Cockpit consolidates driver’s assistance systems, entertainment controls, and instrument cluster.
BMW Idrive
BMW’s iDrive includes their Intelligent Personal Assistant for voice commands, Bluetooth connectivity of personal devices, navigation, music, and climate control.
personalization and Customization
Personalize the default view through widgets to be most useful to the driver and passengers.
THE Problem Space
BMW had recently launched iDrive 5 and was receiving many calls from dealers unable to fix the voice system for customers. Additionally, BMW had recently scored poorly on their JD Power Initial Quality Survey (IQS). J.D. Power’s IQS takes a look at the problems owners are having with their new vehicles, including those related to new technologies. The iconic study measures components that fail and features that are difficult to use, hard to understand, or don’t work the way owners want.
With legacy vehicles receiving poor scores and pre-production models undergoing tight software development lifecycles, it was important to find the root of these issues and improve the product.
“The Initial Quality Study is the industry benchmark for new-vehicle quality and, year after year, automakers apply the insights they learn from consumers to make positive changes.”
VALUE & IMPACT
My work at BMW led to an increase in IQS scores and fixing many problems within the infotainment system.
Additionally, the UI and instrument cluster features are initially created without names or only had German names. Each market is responsible for naming or translating new features. Furthermore, the design and placement of touch keys can be redesigned for each market’s need. I was able to use my research from this study to improve future products before they were released, especially in areas around data privacy transparency, interaction design, and product usability.
Process
Methods
Surveys & Customer Verbatims
Product Evaluation
Competitive Analysis
Dialect Research
Usability Study
Key Takeaways
Surveys were analyzed from customers owning a vehicle in the first six months of purchase. These verbatims were analyzed for concerns regarding the voice recognition system and visual content. A product evaluation was done on models and head units with customer concerns including competitive analysis alongside comparable competitor models.
Main concerns with conversation system discovered:
Understandability of dialects
External noise & microphones
Dealer training & driver’s manual
Unable to understand certain commands (software bugs)
Led to improvements with communication resources such as updating driver’s manuals, creation of BMW videos on using voice recognition system, and training dealers on the proper use of the system. It also pushed for improvements of noise cancelation in microphones and letting customers know to reduce external noises when possible.
Overall software bugs in legacy models were found and fixed. With customer support, bugs that were previously not prioritized could be incorporated. Furthermore, I ran a study to collect dialects and synonyms from customers to incorporate into the system.
This work also led to a workshop in Munich to incorporate these findings into the next generation of voice systems to be released in 2021 and a usability study on the system before release.
Final Product
Product video of BMW’s Intelligent Personal Assistant from press release 2018
Final Thoughts
Reflection
Throughout this independent project, from research to design, I gathered feedback from engineers, product, and researchers across BMW divisions worldwide. Communication with cross-functional teams and users helped me prioritize design requirements and iterate on solutions for each generation of the system. Additionally, this project emphasized the value of user-centered design which led to further collaboration with UX teams in Munich and the importance of UX in engineering teams overall.