smart car owner app -
Car Music Light Show

Project Intro

I was design lead to design digital initiatives for the smart App‘s Joy of Life strategy: Car Music Light Show & DIY my car.

In this project, I led one XD and two BAs to conduct user research, product design, and interactive prototyping design. We also also collaborated with the development team to conduct POC validation.

Some numbers for context

60000+

App Users

100+

User-Created Light Show projects

30+

Official Car DIY quick commands

So, What’s Car Music Light Show in smart App？

More than just a ride, it’s a playful companion.

  • It allows smart car owners to customize a light show based on songs and display the lights and music using their smart car, Enhance the playability and fun of the car.

define problem

Understand User and Business

We conducted comprehensive research to ensure we fully understood how users perceive the playfulness of the smart car.

We interviewed 12 users, including owners of competing cars and users of similar products from other industries (e.g., Mi Home), to figure out their user scenarios. And further understand their past experiences and feelings, then uncovering their needs and expectations.

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what we learned

We categorized users based on their behavior towards content and their usage needs into three types.

Our research revealed two main user groups for light shows:

Surprise Creators

They enjoy creating their own light shows, And prefer using the product during special moments.

"I want to customize my own light show, choosing songs that have special meaning to me during the creation process, to surprise my family and friends."

Trend Followers

They are willing to learn and use from others' great works. And prefer to purely experience them without any creation effort.

"I hope to get rich music light show inspirations more intuitively and quickly, and share them with my friends."

Additionally, a segment of efficiency-focused users called Efficiency Experts is more inclined to create personalized DIY use cases for their car.

Defining Goals

As a new product, we aim to ensure ample content for users and accumulate more light shows in the early stages, to increase user engagement and usage frequency.

Our design goal is to create a highly playful product,

for Surprise Creators, lower the barriers to creating light shows.

for Trend Followers, Provide more ready-to-use light shows for users to encourage their engagement and usage.

define solution

Ideation

Going back to the users

After brainstorming, we came up with 60+ideas for light shows, and conducted the concept of Modular Creation and One-Click Reuse Light Show combine all the types of ideas we had.

Modular Creation allows ‘Surprise Creators’ users to directly mix and match light segments and music pieces. One-Click Reuse Light Show provides scenario-based light shows for trend follower’ users to use right away.

With the design concepts in place, we created storyboards and wireframes to visually communicate the ideas. Afterward, we conducted another round of user interviews. The feedback from this idea validation led to further refinements in our concepts and interaction design,

Storyboard

Storyboard

Information Architecture

Information Architecture

Mid- fidelity

Mid- fidelity

POC validation

In modular creation, an important technical challenge is reducing the difficulty for users in matching music and light animations in the creation flow.

To address this, we broke down the creation process into manageable steps through the user flow. By using music analysis, we modularized music segments. Identifying onset and peak information in the audio, filtering it, and recognizing the strength, speed, and tempo of the rhythm.

This way making it easier for users to match music segments with light animations.

Light show creation flow
Music tech analysis

Introducing our solution

Car Music Light Show

  • Focus on high playability and encouraging user interaction.

  • Simplify product usage with features like one-click reuse to lower barriers.

  • Offer personalized recommendations to enrich user experience across diverse scenarios.

Effortless Modular Creation

One-Click Reuse Light Show

Click to Play the smart Light Show

  • Music library Provide a diverse selection of music to help users quickly find the perfect tracks for creating their light shows.

  • Audio segmentation is automatically analyzed and segmented, with animations snapping to music highs, making light show creation simpler and more convenient.

  • Recommend suitable animation effects for the current lighting area to reduce user effort.

  • Real-time preview provides immediate feedback, allowing users to enjoy the creative process.

  • One-Click Reuse Light Show provides scenario-based light shows for trend follower’ users to use right away.

  • A music light show community with categorized recommendations based on user scenarios (e.g., holidays like New Year, anniversaries, current city).

  • Recommend light shows based on user tags, such as basic user information and usage behavior.