Review of the intierial

Cadillac Navigation System
38 inch curved screen for 2021 Escalade
"-Cadillac Escalades are known for being big vehicles, and the 2021 version will apparently get a screen to match.-"
My Role
Lead design from beginning to end
Manage a team of 3 designers
Work with the team to deliver visual
Work with the research team to iterate based on users' feedbacks
Work with PM, PJM, Dev, QA to deliver the final product
Worked directly with GM internal stakeholders
Debated and proposed innovative UX solutions
Designed new documentation formats for better collaboration and understanding
Personas
The research team offered the following personas, after some survey and user interviews. I joined most of the user interviews.
Supermom: 34, Beauty Salon Owner, 4 kids
Hipster: 40, Recording Studio owner, single
Nearly Retired: 60, Construction CEO, single
I referred to them throughout the entire product development process.
Features
GM offered a requirement file, listing all the features they want. I went through the list, worked with PM to offer the following feedback:
Design vs Feature: e.g. "Need to have a direction arrow for each search result" vs "Need to help users understand the direction of each search result".
De-scope: I believe that for having a feature, we need a better reason than "It won't hurt", "We always have this" or "All others are doing it".
By going through and polishing the requirements, we had not only freed up more room for designing but also understood better for users' goals.

linked wireframes as happy path
Happy Path
After we had agreed on the scope of features, I began to think of some happy paths. The reason I did this first, is to focus on the key features, without spending too much attention on the frictions of user experience.
I reviewed and iterated on 3 different paths I came up, with the team until the whole team has the same vision.
The happy path whole team agreed on had about 20 screens, and the final design document had included more than 300 screens.

prototype for testing the happy path
Clinic
I worked with the research team and customers to test the happy path with our target users.
The goal is to prove the mental modal in the happy path, does offer an intuitive and enjoyable user experience.

review process including the customers
Process
It was really important to build trust with the internal stakeholders at GM so we would have the opportunity to push the limit on the design and interaction. I helped develop and implement a formal review process that enabled different audiences to participate and review the different stages of the design.
Below are some key points this process took care of:
Transparency: Try to include the team into the design process, meaning brainstorm together, show design as early as possible.
Different audience: PM needs to understand the flow fast, dev needs to cover most of the logical cases, QA needs to know what had been changed.

slanted screen
Unique Challenge
Laying out navigation on a system that used slant and a curved right edge was challenging and I needed to invent and test new UI patterns like word predictions in the search box.

example for wireframes
UX Delivery
Flows
Define the relationships between different screens, interactions
Screen Descriptions
Define the cases on one screen, spec for UX
Change Log
Screenshot of the changelog, and link to the real page

example for mockup
UI Delivery
Key Screens
This is to present and get feedbacks
Visual spec
This is to include all details for implementation
Library structure
This is to help designers to avoid manual mistakes

example for motion design
Motion Delivery
Curve Definition
This is to spec different speeds for the animation, so the dev team can reuse them for most of the animation.
Global Motion
Those are the motion method that can be reused in multiple locations.
Specific Motion
Those are the motion for some special cases.
After we built the product, I worked with the research team to run multiple usability tests, then iteration base on them.
Not all can be accepted easily, but here are some examples.

prototype for previous design
Previous
Task: Open [favorites] during Active Navigation:
- Tap on back to see level one/two
- Tap on [favorites]
Finding from user research:
the back button is hard to find, most users scroll to look for favorites. This finding is applied to all tasks that

prototype for proposed design
New Proposal
Task: Open [favorites] during Active Navigation:
Scroll to find [favorites]
- Tap on [favorites]