Every Seat is a Great Seat
It has been a privilege for me to define FF 91 ‘s user experience in the past four years. Today I would like to share our unique design perspective about how we define user experience of FF 91. When buyers are on the hunt for a new car in 2020, they’re not going to find a car that’s designed to satisfy both drivers and passengers. Today’s cars and their infotainment systems are heavily focused on the driving experience, while passengers are an afterthought.
With FF 91, we took an entirely different approach and set out to create the ultimate in-cabin experience for three distinct sets of users: drivers, front passengers, and rear passengers. We believe the quality of each passenger’s experience is just as critical as the drivers. This approach allowed us to explore entertainment and productivity functionality previously unseen in the automotive industry.
We also explored how users interact with other passengers in their car: how would a driver ask a front passenger to find a restaurant and initiate navigation? How would rear passengers share and play their favorite songs throughout the car? By actively considering the needs of each passenger, we are able to deliver a cohesive digital user experience to all users.
It’s 6:30 PM on Monday night, you just finished work, and you’re driving through downtown traffic to a restaurant. You need to pay constant attention to the traffic around you and monitor the navigation on your phone.
For many people all over the world, this is their daily routine. According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), multitasking and driver distractions are one of the primary causes of traffic fatalities. Based on recent studies from Oregon State University, anything that takes your attention away from driving for two seconds or longer can increase the risk of an accident by 24 times.
Our goal is to eliminate driver distractions and provide drivers a simplified interface that keeps their attention focused on the road ahead. Many modern cars scatter critical information across multiple displays, including Head-Up Displays (HUD), Instrument Panel Clusters (IPC), and Central Information Displays (CID). This lack of clarity makes it difficult for the driver to find critical information while they are driving.
In order to provide a safe and effortless driver experience, we reorganized the types of information the driver encounters on each display. FF 91’s information architecture places the most critical driving information on the HUD, including speedometer and ADAS data, while secondary information is placed on the IPC and CID:
Customizable controls on FF 91’s steering wheel allows the driver to control all of the HUD’s functionality without taking their eyes off the road, including making phone calls, responding to notifications, and controlling audio playback:
FRONT PASSENGER EXPERIENCE
The front passenger often plays a critical role next to the driver. Whether embarking on a long road trip or a routine ride to work, the co-pilot has particular duties to perform. Front passengers often help drivers enter in point of interest (POI) information in navigation systems, or choose a POI from a list.
We created ShareDrop so passengers can easily share POI information from any device to the driver’s Central Information Display. Once the driver receives a shared POI, they can initiate navigation to the destination, and directions will be displayed on the HUD. In addition to sharing POIs, passengers can also utilize ShareDrop to send song selections to any of the Individual Sound Zones in FF 91.
REAR PASSENGER EXPERIENCE
During FF 91’s initial design phase, our aim for the Rear Passenger Experience was to create a true living room experience for the road. In order to seamlessly transfer this experience into FF 91, the interior design and user experience was built around the front and rear passengers.
The rear Passenger Experiences in FF 91 are more than simple transportation from Point A to Point B. Passengers will experience a level of comfort and enjoyment that until now has not existed on the road. This is why we created the Third Internet Living Space.
By utilizing FFID and facial recognition, we seamlessly transfer each passenger’s entertainment experience from their living room to FF 91. The 27-inch Rear Passenger Display (RSD), and three high-speed cellular modems allow the passengers to stream the same movies, TV shows, and sports content from their preferred streaming services:
Users can continue their work on the road with our productivity suite, including video conferencing:
In an upcoming post, we’ll detail the focal point of the Rear Passenger Experience, Spa Mode:
By integrating driver, front passenger, and rear passenger three different user experience altogether, we deliver a cohesive in-cabin digital experience to our user. In the future, we would like to show more details about how we define revolutionary user experience especially on the rear seat of FF 91.
About the Author
Janus Yuan is a UX designer on FF’s Internet & Artificial Intelligence team. For the past four years, Janus has led the UXUI design of Driver Controls, Charging, and ADAS system
