This is the first time for Huawei to do something for car industry, so there was no one had ever designed it before in Huawei. I felt so worried because I almost knew nothing about car, and had never driven a car. But at the same time I felt so excited, because I had more freedom in design and there were many experts in our team. The device was not only about interfaces but extremely associated with hardware. Thus, my previous experience of industrial design helped me a lot.

As this was a totally new project for our department, we planed three ways for this design: 1. my design, the main design approach; 2. one proposal from a design company; 3. one proposal from the cooperative telematics company. These three ways were working simultaneously. It made my work very intensive, because I had to make a very detailed and comprehensive project plan to make sure that everyone would deliver their proposal in time, and I had to manage three projects at the same time. Moreover, the time was extremely limited: only three months from zero to a detailed design proposal. My coach tried so hard to help me fight for more time, but there was no space.

Although time was limited, I still wanted to make a good design. So I asked my coach that can we had a user research before our design. “It depends on you. ” he answered. Then there were two researchers came to our team and I did researches with them. We went to two other cities and interviews plenty of users. Other than design research, I attended two famous summits in car industry with team members from other department. In order to share the informations I got and to educate other designers in our department, I shared everything I learned about car industry weekly by email.

        During the design process, I learned so many things not only about Telematics, but also about how influential design is. A bad design could even kill people in this case. For example, we chose black background because it is less distracting than a bright background, especially when driving at night. We cut so many functions, such as video, because watching videos when driving is very dangerous. But I found my considerations were never enough. After resigning the job for a year, I learned driving and got a driver’s license. One day, I told my husband that I should apologize to one of the experts in my team, because he was right that I designed too many dangers. My husband said “you should call right now. ” And I did.