What is Android Auto?
A driving-safe mode for your favorite apps.
Android Auto is a safe, connected experience for driving with your
favorite apps. Currently launched to ~30 car manufacturers with 50+ apps, I led UX for voice actions and predictive suggestions in the car, balancing cognitive load, minimizing driver distraction, and taking into account multi-modal input, rotary, and capacitive, resistive screens.
“Sending or reading a text takes your eyes off the road for 5 seconds. At 55 mph, that’s like driving the length of an entire football field with your eyes closed.”
Designed for safety
Because your screen is at arms' length in the car with poor lighting conditions, the app optimizes for driving by:
- Increasing contrast – even beyond accessibility guidelines
- Enlarging tap target size
- Organizing your apps by activity rather than an app launcher
- Surfacing predictive suggestions
- Providing voice actions
Android Auto is available in 3 ways:
- Phone-only mode: Android Auto takes over your phone screen.
- Car head unit: Plug Android phone into compatible car. Android Auto displays on your car screen.
- Native car OS: Android runs in your car as your new device, like your phone, watch, and TV.
The Context: What is Home?
Home in Android Auto is where a driver can see and act on predictive suggestions.
We are creatures of habit. A typical drive consists of the same destinations and actions: Drop off the kids before work. Pick up a coffee. Call mom or listen to a "Morning Commute" playlist. With our predictive algorithm, you don't have to navigate the UI; Home brings relevant content to you.
The Challenge: Home cards
The car head unit version is 3 years old. The phone-only version was launched in 2016. Over time, these two versions deviated from one another, both in code and in interaction.
The goal of this project was to design a fluid and responsive card model that has the same functionality for both phone and head unit versions. In doing so, the same card component can be used across portrait and landscape screen sizes.
Whiteboarding
I did some whiteboarding to tease out all the constraints and possible directions, before moving into digitizing interaction proposals.
The Solution: Unified interaction patterns
The solution needs to work with:
- Touch only
- Touch on resistive screens
- Rotary only
- Touch AND rotary (Need the ability to switch modes)
As well as Portrait & Landscape on mobile, and various head unit sizes for car screens.
Visual polish
Once the interaction patterns were reviewed by the UX, Product, and Eng team, we moved into high-fidelity visual polish. I worked with a visual designer to iterate.
Shipped.