7 MIN READ • AUGUST 17 2025
This made me realize that many interactions of the in-car navigation take more time & effort than they should, leaving plenty of room for improvement. As a UX designer, I began exploring ideas to enhance this experience by integrating intelligent interface solutions into the navigation display.
I chose to focus mainly on electric vehicles because selecting a charging station is more complex and critical than simply pulling into a fuel station for a traditional Internal Combustion Engine.
Now coming back to the first question of this article, why car interfaces does not look so polished yet? After spending time on the internet, I found out that,
even a minor change takes multiple rounds of safety assessments before a product is deployed into the market, this is done to ensure safety. This makes the interface look always outdated.
“This is because one issue in Human Machine Interface is a matter of life and death (seriously and literally).
The development cycle is extremely long (3–5 years), because even a minor change needs to be tested in all the driving contexts with different safety concerns.[1]”
To deepen my understanding of this topic, I studied and analyzed several existing in-vehicle navigation systems. Many of them offer useful features, however, I noticed that a number of these systems fail to address basic user needs, especially for electric vehicle drivers. For example, simply finding a nearby charging station often requires going through multiple steps and manual input. Most systems do not prioritize sufficient information about charger availability, ability to reserve a charging spot, plug type compatibility and nearby amenities.
These gaps become even more critical when the driver is on a highway, travelling at speeds of 60–100 km/h, where quick, contextual, and clear information is essential to make timely and safe decisions.
Android Auto has done an impressive job here, it provides car manufacturers a well functional and sleek looking interface which can easily adapt to the make and model of any car. However, this also has a downside. Vehicle owners often wants their car feel different and here, one size fits all doesn’t work. That brought me back to creating an interface which can scale across the car industry without compromising personalisation.
User Needs
– Task efficiency ensuring safety
– Clear and systematic interface
– Find charger availability and ability to reserve spot
Opportunities for Improvement
I started with secondary research, quick 1 on 1 interviews, and a heuristic review of existing navigation systems. This helped me spot key opportunities for improvement and understand common user frustrations. Based on these insights, I chose to focus my project on improving-
– Lack of charging details
– Too much visual clutter
– Distracting UI
– Battery Anxiety
Process
I created a user flow diagram to map the journey and keep the process structured before moving into high-fidelity design. This spots potential gaps early and resolve them before they became bigger issues.
Three Main Features
Find Chargers
There are various ways to start the navigation. It can be activated through the voice commands or simply tapping “Find Chargers” shows a list of nearby chargers sorted by distance and time to reach from the current location.
Reserve a Spot
This feature offers users a streamlined interface for reserving a charging spot at an electric vehicle station. With features such as duration selection, priority and a cost breakup before confirming the reservation gives a peace of mind before arriving to a charge station.
Use Case: In case of cancellation or no show
I explored two ideas on how we can tackle the challenge for no shows or to minimise cancellation so that it does not affect other users who want to reserve a spot. I evaluated both ideas objectively using Impact Effort Matrix.
The first approach is to introduce gamification in the reservation model, by incentivising users with points. Points are credited when user successfully completes a charge, arriving punctually and cancelling in advance. This approach is a bit complex so it requires relatively more development costs.
The second approach is to introduce 3 tiers of cancellation. The tiers will be based on time of cancellation, a 15min window, 1hr window and above 1 hour, with 100% refund 50% refund and 0% refund respectively. Due to its similarity to cancellation models used in hotel businesses and flight booking systems, this idea is easier to adapt and also relatively less complex to develop.
The impact was measured by how effective each idea could be, rated on a scale of 1 to 5. Effort was assessed based on development complexity and cost. While the gamification approach is engaging, it requires high effort with only moderate impact. The tiered cancellation policy, on the other hand, delivers strong impact with relatively low effort. This balance makes the second approach a practical and suitable idea to move forward with.
Send to Car
This feature is in the smartphone app that follows the same user journey as the in-car navigation system, ensuring a consistent mental model. The app allows users to plan their EV route in advance and conveniently send it to the car. When the user enters the vehicle, their chosen options are already set, allowing the navigation to begin seamlessly.
Conclusion
By incorporating user research, benchmarking against existing systems, and iterative design processes, the final prototype introduces features such as Spot Reservation, contextual UI, real time charger filters, and pre journey planning via smartphone app.
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