Research Design

As the research lead, I worked with a team of designers and strategists to coordinate research activities, conduct interviews, evaluate and synthesize data and eventually consolidate the findings and final report.

We spoke to EV owners in New York, California, New Jersey, and Massachusetts. We collaborated with a partner agency in Shanghai which lead China specific research and documentation. The findings from the research were integrated and contextualized for the client.

Research Activities:

1. Stakeholder Interviews

2. Diary Studies

3. Ethnographic Immersions

4. Ride-Alongs and Vehicle Tours

5. Ideal Future Visioning

6. Design Feedback

Stakeholder Interviews

The project was initiated with stakeholder interviews with cross-functional teams and programs.

We met with various stakeholders including: designers, engineers, marketers, leadership, and researchers. The intention of these interviews was to uncover where there was existing interest and creative energy, and hypotheses.

Diary Studies

This is an example of the pre-work assigned to research participants. The objective of the homework was to get a sense of our participants and shape the research and interview guide that we eventually used in the field.

The homework included questions about their daily life, their hopes and dreams, practical restraints and their favorite elements of their vehicles.

We received personal photos, vehicles photos and diary style entries about their weekdays and weekends.

Ethnographic Immersions

The ethnographic immersions were focused on gaining a broad understanding of the research participants — where they lived, what they cared about, what motivated them, what they loved and where they hoped to go in their lives. We spoke deeply about their family circumstances, their needs broadly, what they did to have fun, their interior decor choices and most importantly, their vehicles.

The research participants gave us a tour of their vehicles, their most liked and disliked design elements and features. They drove us to a destination of their choice and often took us for longer drives to show us their neighbourhoods or favourite cruises.

Synthesis

As the research was completed we began to synthesize the data that was collected from each of the research participants. We worked across several information hierarchies simultaneously, exploring insights from a product level (design features, and technology preferences) and at a more emotional journey level, looking at groupings of motivations and behaviors to own an EV.

Our findings led us to understand that there were distinct groupings of behavior and motivators which were eventually turned into personas. Conversely the aspects of the product that were loved and desired were similar across all groups.

We identified personas, product design opportunities and experience opportunities.

Personas

The personas that were developed helped us understand the distinct emotional and behavioral dispositions that brought different individuals to purchase EVs. Their motivations were deeply tied to individual goals and ambitions from an urge to ‘live in the future’ to a deep desire to contribute to a carbon-neutral world.

The personas were also used for opportunity exploration, future product experience and design concepts. We tailored each ideation to a specific persona and developed overarching experience guidelines that refocused the recommendation on what was commonly needed.

Framing Opportunities

Through identification of the common painpoints and challenges, we identified and prioritized the most pressing experience solutions that our client would need to bring to market with the launch of their first EV.

Concept Design

After opportunity areas were identified we developed product and future experience concepts, which we sketched out and paired with provocations.