My primary duty at Terrafugia was the design and development of the vehicle user experience for the Transition flying car. Terrafugia had a stage gated product development process through which I, as the owner of UX, drove the design to maturity and implementation. A key aspect of vehicle UX was the instrument cluster display interface. This display - located behind the steering wheel - was used by the operator while driving and flying, as well as to transition between the two modes. I modified existing human factors requirements and created new ones, defined the overall architecture of the display screens, designed wireframes, drove multiple rounds of iterations with key stakeholders, gained stakeholder buy-in on the detail design of features, and enabled coordination between subsystem teams to ensure smooth implementation. I also created visual design artifacts that the software team used to implement the display, in addition to writing detail-level front end software requirements for the disaplay.

In the absence of a system engineering group, the UX architecture drove software development, and the information architecture and task flows that I created were converted into high level and detail level software requirements. I presented a talk on the relationship between UX and System Architecture in early to mid stage startup environments at MIT Systems Night organized by the System Design and Management department in October 2018, using my experience with the development of the Transition UX as a case study.

The Instrument cluster display provides the operator with relevant information when the vehicle is driving and when it is flying. A significant portion of the information is relevant in both modes, hence the screens have a design that is familiar enough, yet the differences are obvious. The drive mode screen is depicted on the left, and the flight mode screen on the right.

The vehicle shifts between drive and fly modes via a step by step process that involves changing the wing configuration (fold/unfold) and completing an associated checklist assisted by the prompts on the instrument cluster display. Here, a couple of screens from the wing unfold task flow are shown.

An interactive touch screen prototype of the instrument cluster display was developed for exhibition at trade shows as well as familiarization training for pilots. The collage of pictures above show the prototype at the Experimental Aviation Association Airventure air show at Oshkosh in 2018. In the images on the right, Terrafugia's test pilot can be seen operating the prototype in a demonstration for visitors to the Terrafugia booth.

This animation was created using Adobe After Effects to aid the software development team and other stakeholders to understand the UI behaviour during start up in flight mode. This animation shows screen states as the operator turns on the vehicle, starts the engine, and taxies out on the ramp.

This animation illustrates the drive mode screen, showing various screen states as the driver starts up the vehicle via the key, turns on the engine, and then shifts into reverse.