Overview
At Jaguar Land Rover, I served as Lead User Experience Designer and Product Owner for a next-generation in-vehicle infotainment system within a global luxury automotive organization. My role operated at the intersection of user experience, product strategy, engineering execution, and brand ideology, where interaction decisions carried implications for usability, development velocity, localization, regulatory compliance, and organizational alignment.
This work surfaced a critical insight:
in complex product ecosystems, user experience strategy is inseparable from how an organization coordinates knowledge, decisions, and timing.
in complex product ecosystems, user experience strategy is inseparable from how an organization coordinates knowledge, decisions, and timing.
The project ultimately extended beyond interface design into left-shifting the design and development process itself, using a Global HMI Rig as a strategic alignment tool across teams, regions, and systems.
The Strategic Problem
Luxury brands often advocate for “simplicity,” but define it differently than mainstream UX practice.
In conventional UX:
simplicity implies intuitiveness, clarity, and accessibility
In luxury automotive contexts:
simplicity often assumes prior familiarity
complexity is hidden rather than removed
interaction fluency becomes a signal of belonging
This creates a dual challenge:
Designing an infotainment system that feels effortless to a core luxury user
Coordinating global teams so that this intent is consistently understood, implemented, and validated
As platform complexity increased—across features, markets, and regulatory environments—it became clear that misalignment, not capability, was the primary risk.
Context & Constraints
Global luxury automotive manufacturer
Multi-year infotainment platform spanning vehicle lines
Distributed design, engineering, research, and validation teams
Region-specific requirements for localization, regulation, and standards
Introduction of a new requirements-tracking system intended to improve traceability
While requirements were increasingly formalized, shared understanding lagged behind.
Product & UX Leadership Role
My responsibility extended beyond interface decisions.
As UX Lead and Product Owner, I was accountable for:
Coherence across features and interaction patterns
Translating research insights into product-level decisions
Aligning design intent with engineering feasibility
Mediating between brand expectations and usability evidence
This placed UX in a strategic coordination role, not simply an execution function.
“Luxury Simple” as a Designed Threshold
Comparative usability testing revealed a consistent pattern:
New or everyday users encountered friction and hesitation
Experienced users described the system as “fine,” while asking if it could be “simpler”
Rather than indicating a usability failure, this exposed a deliberate threshold:
The system was optimized for users with existing technological and cultural capital
Difficulty functioned as a filter, not a bug
Usability metrics were interpreted through brand ideology
From a UX strategy perspective, the system was not just an interface—it was a mechanism for signaling luxury through learned interaction.
The Organizational Risk
As features multiplied and teams scaled globally, a second problem emerged:
Teams were building the same system, but holding different mental models of it.
Designers, engineers, researchers, and regional teams each referenced different artifacts
Requirements were documented but abstract
Conflicts around localization, standards, and feature interaction surfaced late
At this scale, late discovery meant:
costly rework
political friction
erosion of design intent
The UX problem had become a product system problem.
Left-Shifting the Process: The Global HMI Rig
To address this, we introduced a Global HMI Rig—not as a prototype, but as a UX strategy and organizational alignment instrument.
The Rig functioned as a living, experiential reference point for the infotainment system, enabling teams to engage with the product earlier and together.
This was a deliberate left-shift:
surfacing interaction, localization, and standards issues upstream
before implementation, validation, or regional rollout
What the Rig Enabled (Strategically)
Early Feature Coherence
Teams could evaluate how features behaved across modes and states before decisions were locked in.
Localization as a First-Order Concern
Regional teams validated language, layout, and cultural expectations early—reducing downstream adaptation risk.
Standards as Experience, Not Documentation
Compliance and standards became visible, testable behaviors rather than static requirements.
Shared UX Vocabulary
Designers, engineers, and product managers referenced the same embodied system, reducing interpretive drift.
From a UX strategy standpoint, the Rig transformed alignment from negotiation into shared perception.
Integration with Requirements Tracking
Crucially, the Global HMI Rig was designed to work in tandem with a new requirements-tracking system.
Together, they formed a feedback loop between:
formal requirements
design intent
embodied system behavior
implementation constraints
This shifted requirements from a compliance artifact into a sensemaking tool, where gaps, conflicts, and trade-offs surfaced early—when they were still resolvable.
Product Strategy Insight
The Global HMI Rig reframed UX leadership from:
defending design decisions downstream
reacting to late-stage conflicts
to:
orchestrating shared understanding upstream
enabling earlier, higher-quality product decisions
Left-shifting was not about speed.
It was about moving meaning, alignment, and user experience strategy earlier in the lifecycle.
It was about moving meaning, alignment, and user experience strategy earlier in the lifecycle.
Outcomes
Product Outcomes
Improved coherence across features and regions
Reduced late-stage UX and localization conflicts
Stronger traceability between requirements and experience
Organizational Outcomes
Shared understanding across global teams
Earlier cross-disciplinary collaboration
UX positioned as a strategic coordination function
Why This Work Matters
This project clarified a foundational principle of product and UX strategy:
In complex systems, the most important design work often happens before interfaces are finalized.
The Global HMI Rig demonstrated that:
User experience strategy includes designing how organizations align
Tools shape decision-making, not just outputs
UX leadership operates at the level of systems, timing, and power—not screens alone
This insight directly informed my later work in:
interdisciplinary innovation systems
curriculum and program design
humane-centered and justice-aware design leadership
Key Takeaway
The Jaguar Land Rover infotainment system was not simply a product.
It was a distributed socio-technical system, where usability, brand, and organizational structure were inseparable.
By left-shifting understanding through the Global HMI Rig, UX became a strategic lever—aligning teams, clarifying intent, and shaping outcomes long before the product reached the road.