As an ex-Ford driver with a passion for creating automotive user interfaces, I saw an opportunity to improve the current Ford SYNC 4-A infotainment system. Through this redesign, I aimed to provide a more personalized and intuitive experience for Ford drivers.
The new home screen of the SYNC 4 app is fully customizable, enabling drivers to add various app widgets to the screen. For example, they can add a calendar widget that shows their agenda for today, a Spotify widget with their favorite playlist, or Apple Maps widget that provides shortcuts to favorite places, such as home, work, or the nearest café or restaurant.
The redesigned version of the My Apps screen allows users easily drag and drop an app onto the top bar, making it accessible with just one tap even when using other apps. This customization feature enables users to have quick access to their most frequently used apps, ensuring they have everything they need at their fingertips while driving.
The app view has been optimized to ensure a safer driving experience. By removing all the unnecessary elements on the screen, users can focus solely on the integrated Apple Maps or any other navigation app while driving. They can still reduce the window size of the app and see the top app bar by tapping the top-right [ _] icon.
The climate control panel keeps the same structure because it's recognizable by millions of car drivers all over the world. The main design challenge was to visually detach it from the infotainment system since the climate control is the only UI component that always stays at the same place, and doesn't interact much with the rest of the system.
In conclusion, the new SYNC 4 design concept provides users with a more personalized and safer driving experience. The main changes include a fully customizable home screen, customizable app bar, improved app viewer, and updated climate control interface.
It's fair to say that all the suggested improvements are assumptions based on my experience designing digital products and best practices overall. Since I'm not a part of the Ford Design team, I don't have enough context and knowledge about the tech possibilities and user insights to justify my design decisions. But I believe some of these changes can enhance the user experience and provide a more seamless and intuitive interface for driving.