Climate 2.0 | Ford & Lincoln

Keywords:
In-vehicle HMI
UX / UI Redesign

How might we make climate controls easier to access while keeping the system simple, safe, and scalable?

Re-architected information hierarchy:

• Prioritized frequent controls across persistent bar, quick panel, and full climate panel.

Redesigned interaction patterns for driving:

• Improved scanability, reduced visual complexity, and made adjustments faster and more precise.

Built for future scalability:

• Created a structure that could support additional controls and customization without redesigning the whole system.

Impact:

• User feedback showed a positive directional improvement in perceived ease of use and overall satisfaction, though the sample size was limited.
• Key usability issues fully resolved.
• Approved for production.

Baseline: Legacy platform
(Issue)


Constraints:
Reach zone & Scalable design

Initial idea:
Mobile-inspired
1.0 UX / UI
(rejected after testing)

Usability testing:
Quick Panel A (later refined)
Quick Panel B (rejected)

Final:
Refined UX/UI(signed) 
Progressive UX/UI(rejected)

-
Iteration:
2.0 UX/UI (later refined)
3.0 UX/UI (suggested by leadership, rejected after testing)

All touch controls had to remain within one-arm reach of the driver.

The 27" display required a narrow, driver-left / passenger-right layout.

Climate functions had to remain fully operable by touch, even with voice support.

User Feedback

• Reduced Visual Clutter: reduced visual clutter and steps for frequent tasks..
• Improved driving usability: clearer controls, more accurate feedback, and safer adjustment while driving.
• Built for scale: reusable structure supports customization and future climate features.
  
  

Quick-Access Panel Evolution:
Moved frequent climate actions into a customizable quick panel for faster access without opening the full climate page.

Persistent Interaction Dock:
Used five persistent hot zones for temperature adjustment, quick-panel access, full climate access, and safety-critical defrost.

Explored a flatter, more visual climate experience aligned with leadership’s design direction.

Why we moved away from it: The concept reduced navigation layers, but it weakened direct temperature adjustment and conflicted with established user habits. *We returned to a more accessible control model.

Tested direction

Explored vertical temperature sliders and a secondary seat-control layer without a dedicated quick-access panel.

What we learned:

• Higher visual and interaction complexity 
• Temperature adjustment was harder to read and control 
• Wind-direction interaction felt unfamiliar 
• More UI layers increased development and maintenance cost
  
• Passenger control was too limited, increasing driver workload.
  

Goal:

• Reduce persistent-bar clutter while keeping frequent climate controls accessible.

What we learned:

• Four hot zones compressed too many behaviors into limited space. 
• Users did not always understand which area triggered which action. 
• The quick panel appeared unexpectedly and caused misoperation.

1.0 Climate Panel (Mobile inspired)

During the exploration phase, I tested multiple design ideas to address core usability issues in the original climate panel. Below are the key explorations and the usability issues identified.

Exploration Idea	Usability Issue Identified
Swipe left to access seat controls	Hidden gesture had low discoverability
Persistent temperature control	Increased accidental inputs while driving
Main panel for major controls	Improved visibility but increased clutter
Grouped control clusters	Easier to scan and navigate

Video below shows you how to adjust first-row seat temperature.

The image below shows you how to enter the first-row cabin from the main climate panel. 

Explored separate heating and ventilation states for first-row seat climate, using tap-based controls for more stable operation while driving.

Why it is dropped

The concept depended on deeper hardware integration with the smart climate mode. That created high implementation risk and additional system dependencies, so leadership decided not to move it forward.

↑

Insight:
Telemetry showed a clear usage gap: temperature, fan, Auto, HVAC On/Off, and air circulation were used far more often than secondary climate features.

Design response:
Prioritized high-frequency controls in a quick panel to reduce interaction complexity.

What we learned:
Interviews showed meaningful differences in user habits, which supported a customizable quick panel rather than a fixed layout.

↑

Concept
Added more functions than Proposal A while keeping the quick panel lighter than the full climate panel.

What we learned

The quick panel looked too different from the full panel.

Users had to learn two interaction models.

Extra functionality increased cognitive load without enough benefit.

Decision
Rejected this direction and moved toward a more consistent quick-panel / full-panel relationship.

↑