Amazon Music: Automotive
The 3P and Auto team connected the dots across the vast array of product end points residing outside of the core mobile iOS and Android app experience. The aim was to give customers a unified and cohesive consumption experience regardless of their entry point (whether living room, fitness, wearables, etc). These experiences included Fire TV, Xbox, Roku, Watch OS, and countless others. As a design lead for the auto experience team, safety and distraction free experiences took precedence. Whether crafting a tailored "car-mode" for the iOS and Android mobile applications or integrating into Car Play or Android Auto projection experiences, our number one goal was to bring meaningfully consistent listening experiences into the commute with a keen focus on minimizing opportunities to take eyes off the road.
Understanding the problem
Due to a host of customer anecdotes and behavioral data supporting our desire for approaching the Auto Experiences with a fresh set of eyes, we were given the green light to reimagine the mobile Auto CX. Despite challenges and bugs in the implementation, there was an opportunity to rethink the overall customer experience, specifically through the lens of automotive and driver behavior. With safety and minimizing distraction at the forefront of our minds, we arrived at an interaction model that didn’t stray dramatically from the core app experience. Rather, it leaned into muscle memory, familiarity, and timely relevance.
Vertical Pagination (flick and stick) to eliminate fiddly infinite scrolling and driver distraction
Maintaining familiar and relevant content groupings became the focus
1 tap to playback and making collections available
Leaning into voice first interaction
Drivers are faced with a multitude of distractions: unruly passengers, inclement weather, traffic, texting, bad UI, the list goes on. With the evolution of Alexa as our voice assistant, we ensured that handsfree driving became obvious and predictable.
Elevate voice affordances
Do to a host of factors (muscle memory, previous poor voice experiences, lack of general knowledge of it’s availability) voice users are often hesitant to adopt it as a primary method for interacting with UI. Making it obvious and readily available become a top priority. The evolution of Alexa only made this experience more forgiving and much less cumbersome.
Infotainment + Projection Experiences
Along side of the mobile app Car Mode experience, customers of newer vehicles often have the option of accessing their listening CX via their car’s native Infotainment system (ie. Car Play / Android Auto / Tesla). Based on customer research, we realized that there were different customer expectations between the vehicle’s native infotainment system and their mobile car-mode counterpart. That said, striking a balance between customer anecdotes and predictable product cohesion was where usability research was focussed
iOS Car Play: AM Home
iOS Car Play: AM Podcasts
