Evidence-based Design
UX Research for HyFit by CIXI (France)
9
Participants
36h
Interviewing
+50h
Debriefing
CIXI is an ambitious start-up with the objective of improving people's wellbeing and protecting the planet. CIXI developed HyFit, an individual electric vehicle that combines the benefits of a car and that of a bicycle. The objective of the HyFit is to allow people to be active during their daily trips and reduce their environmental footprint. I am proud to be a part of this project and make a mark for a better future that soon will hit the roads of the world and will change for the better the way we move.
CIXI startup works to provide a solution for several important interconnected problems: hypodynamia of the world population, lack of time for physical activity, and ecological problems connected with CO2 emissions. Active vehicles like HyFit, where a user moves with the help of assisted pedalling, gives an opportunity to be physically active even for people who don't have time for training or has no opportunity to be active. Electric vehicles leave a low ecological footprint during their life cycle.
CIXI multifunctional team of designers, engineers, marketing specialists, and strategists have in mind their hypothesis on who their users are; what their users’ needs are; how their users are currently trying to do things; and how their users would like to do these things. It was necessary to understand if CIXI's vision on how their users would like to move, to be active and to live a sustainable lifestyle is connected with reality and if not how it differs. It was necessary to conduct User Experience Research.
PROJECT TYPE
UX Research
UX Design
UI Design
Product Design
App Design
Dashboard Design
Industrial Design
TEAM
Carlos Arturo Torres
(design director)
Daniel Sánchez
(industrial designer)
Nina Omerovich Beccalli
(product owner)
Coline Clément
(recruitment specialist)
MY RESPONSIBILITY
Digital prototypes
Physical prototypes
Interview guide writing
Setup organisation
Interviewing
Research synthesis
Research presentation
TIME
3 months
Together with the CIXI design team we have defined research questions, developed a discussion guide, designed physical and digital prototypes of the product, recruited participants, and created the experience setup. In 1 week we have conducted 36 hours of live interviews. We needed more than 50 hours to back up tests sessions, organise user test data, tackle highlights and debrief each session.
Experience Setup consisted of a low-fi physical vehicle prototype, a high-fi digital prototype of the user's app and the vehicle dashboard. The sessions were conducted with visual support to immerse users in the imaginable environment and situations to perform particular tasks more naturally. All the process was transmitted with live streaming for other members of the team to be able to participate, observe and make notes.
Each person in a team had their own role: an interviewer, an observer, a note-taker or a wizard of Oz, who is responsible for 'special effects' during a session. Team members were constantly exchanging their roles for different sessions.
Experience Setup
Team Roles
Configurator Set Up
Gestures, emotions, details and quotes - these are the main material that gave us the main information and where our attention was attached.
Insights from test sessions were carefully collected and analysed. The design team was able to synthesise more than one hundred insights into 17 categories, including how users would like to use the app and the dashboard, what minimum valuable functions they imagine for this experience and how CIXI users are different in terms of needs. The research confirmed the main hypothesis that a HyFit is a transformative product. Precious insights became the design opportunities for the next iterations of physical and digital design.
MARCH 2020
Preparation of User Experience Research: definition of the research questions, development of physical prototypes, writing an interview guide.
AUGUST 2020
Recruitment. UX Research.
Debriefing and synthesising of the received results and development of design guidelines and opportunities. Wrapping-up.
Thanks to the well-organised work of the design team and efficient collaboration with the big multifunctional CIXI team, we were able to prepare, conduct and synthesise the UX Research, to test the hypothesis, find the answers to the questions that we had and prepare design opportunities and guidelines for the next iterations of the system of the physical and digital product. The design research of August 2020 gave to the team the opportunity to accelerate the process of design and engineering and bring the first HyFits on the roads in the near future.