CLIENT
Porsche Digital
Full product lifecycleAcademic project
Beyond - Reimagining the passenger experience for autonomous vehicles with Porsche Digital
Final project of my Master's Degree in UX Design, the project explores how autonomous vehicles can shift from simple means of transportation to emotional and functional spaces.
TIMELINE
January - June 2022
TEAM
6 UX Master's Students
ROLE
Full product lifecycle with a focus on:
- User Research (co-conducted 2 focus groups and 6 user testings)
- Concept & business value definition
- Prototyping the passenger experience and the UI
One-Minute Project Overview
Problem & Context
Rethinking Mobility: Why the Passenger Experience Matters
The challenge
Porsche Digital challenged me and my teammates to look ahead:
What will the future of mobility look like in terms of experience? What if moments in transit weren't passive, but deeply engaging?
We had to design for a speculative world (Level 5 autonomous vehicles), while remaining true to Porsche's exclusive brand, and Porsche Digital's cutting-edge product ecosystem.
Premises
Today cars are parked 95% of the time. The limited time spent inside rarely offer value beyond mobility.
(source: Fortune Magazine)The number of autonomous vehicles (AVs) is growing, with sales projected to reach 58 million by 2030.
(source: market.us)Problem Statement
Our investigation began with a clear question in mind, framed as such:
What if a car was more than just a vehicle?
Solution & Outcome
Turning Rides Into Memories: The Concept and Its Impact
The product: "Beyond"
The solution we crafted, iteration after iteration, was Beyond, a car-embedded platform that enhances the passenger journey through AR layers, immersive content, and exclusive experiences. This happens through an AR technology layer embedded in the windshield - it might sound unrealistic, but our competitor analysis revealed otherwise!
The different types of "layers" displayed in the AR windshield can be easily switched on and off, according to user preferences. The whole system itself can be turned off for users to enjoy a quiet ride if they please.
Functional Layers
Discover the surroundings as you pass by - find restaurants, purchase goods or learn about points of interest - or perform a wide variety of work-related or productivity tasks, such as joining virtual meetings.
Entertainment & Social Layers
Travel to collect unique NFTs in specific points of interest, join exclusive community events to interact with fellow community members in a hybrid way, or simply experience the magic of playing games on your windshield.
Results and Measurable Impact
Despite the speculative nature of the project, our outcomes were tangible:
Usability score: 4.2 / 5 average across testing sessions.
User feedback: Positive feedback on clarity, control, and personal relevance.
Business validation: Porsche Digital saw Beyond as a credible future use case to strengthen customer loyalty.
Design recognition: The concept demonstrated how digital and physical experiences can merge without losing the human element.
The process
Understanding People Before Designing for Them
Our process might have been linear, in the "academic" style - we followed the Double Diamond framework - but it was not a straightforward one, given the speculative nature of the project.
Among doubts, small failures and untested assumptions about the future, what really kept us grounded and moving forward was relying on user feedback and referencing competitors' work.
User Research as a foundation
The goal at this early stage was to uncover expectations, fears and desires around in-car digital experiences, and to test the hypothesis that passenger time in autonomous cars could be more pleasurable if paired with meaningful activities.
Our early research consisted of:
- Stakeholder interviews with 2 UX leads at Porsche Digital
- Focus groups with a total of 14 young adults (23–33 years old) from nine countries.
Stakeholder Interview with Ingo Feisthamel, Head of UX at Porsche Digital
Focus group conducted in-person with 6 participants
From insights to concept
The data revealed three strong drivers:
- Freedom of choice
- Social connection without isolation
- Digital layers that enhance, not replace, the real world.
Design for adaptability. Let passengers shape their own experience.
We discovered a key paradox: people crave connection but also moments of quiet. They want choice - to decide when to engage and when to withdraw.
Decisions that shaped the product
Working session with teammate
Comfort over Novelty
We placed AR on the windshield, rather than on wearables - it reduced friction, respected passenger comfort, and kept interactions more natural and smooth.
Familiarity to build trust
Borrowing smartphone logic - grids, icons, simple flows - made the system intuitive from the start.
Personalization as luxury
Passengers can switch between exploration, entertainment, information, or silence - control was the main point, rather than noise.
Usability over futurism
Clear layout, restrained visuals, and natural gestures kept AR useful rather than overwhelming.
Group ideation session
Validating the experience
We tested both low and high-fidelity prototypes with 11 participants across 2 rounds. This validation loop helped us focus the MVP on functionality and exploration, narrowing down the many ideas we had in mind to the ones that really resonated with our target users.
Low-fidelity testing, focused on concept validation
The first round of user testing aimed at validating with our target users the main layers of the solution ecosystem, covering both functional and entertainment features.
Key insights:
- Desire to easily switch off the system if not needed.
- General preference towards functional aspects rather than entertainment ones.
- Privacy concerns about other people's presence in the car.
- Need for a familiar layout and clean interface, with secondary elements hidden.
Low Fidelity mock-ups for concept validation
High-fidelity testing, focused on usability
Our second round of testing focused mostly on validating the user flows of the main features, as well as the accessibility and usability of the UI.
Key insights:
- Overall good usability score: 4.2/5 average
- Icon clarity and menu visibility needed improvement
- Strong positive reactions to gesture and voice control.
Testing high fidelity prototype in a simulated environment
Defining the Business Value for Porsche Digital
Porsche saw Beyond as more than an interface - a way to extend its brand into the future of mobility. The concept aligned with two strategic priorities:
Deepening brand loyalty — Exclusive in-car experiences and events to strengthen Porsche communities.
Reaching new audiences — A flexible, immersive experience appealed to younger users and more women - key growth segments.
The concept opens new, asset-light sources of income:
- NFT Memorabilia: Passengers could collect or purchase exclusive digital artifacts tied to real experiences - like monuments seen en route or access tokens for future events.
- Event Tickets: Metaverse-based or hybrid Porsche events required minimal logistics but carried high perceived value.
- Platform Features: Premium content layers and partnerships with media platforms offered room for subscription-based models in later phases.
Key learnings
How I see design's role in emerging technology now
Beyond was the results of a challenge that wanted to push us students to think of user experience in broader terms - broader than "just another app". It represented a fun but challenging exercise in designing for moments that don't yet exist - a test of foresight and empathy.
This project left me with a sharper sense of how design can shape not just interfaces and experiences, but the future itself. Of the many lessons learned, these are the ones that stand out:
- Speculative doesn't mean vague. Designing for the future requires grounding every hypothesis in present behaviors.
- Emotion as a usability factor. Comfort, agency, and calm matter to shape a user experience just as much as clean flows or pixel precision do.
- Innovation isn't about extremes. The best results came from balancing ambition with restraint - keeping things bold, but never overwhelming.
- Designing for Augmented Reality. Designing for AR uncovered a whole set of design principles and human factors that I had to quickly become familiar with.
Bonus: If I did it today
What I would do differently today, in the era of AI
If I worked on Beyond in 2025, the process would somewhat look different. Although the core vision would mostly remain the same, the tools - and the cultural landscape around emerging tech - have changed a lot.
- AI has shifted how we research, define, and shape experiences. Back then, much of our user research depended on interviews, focus groups, and manual synthesis. Today, I'd use AI to surface behavioral patterns faster, spot gaps in user narratives, and stress-test early hypotheses against larger datasets. That would make our discovery phase sharper and our decisions more evidence-driven.
- I'd also rethink the prototyping and storytelling layer. Generative tools could let us prototype richer interactions and immersive scenarios quickly, making the speculative tangible earlier in the process.
- On the concept side, AI opens up a whole new set of personalization possibilities: adaptive passenger experiences that respond in real time to individual moods, contexts, and preferences - something we could only sketch as a distant possibility in 2022.
