voice ui for ford & iheartradio

Ford hired Huge to design voice UI for its vehicle lineup, allowing drivers to access over 800 broadcast and digital radio stations with voice commands. Using the iHeartRadio app, drivers can search for stations by genre, station name, or radio host. They can also save and play favorite radio stations or stop and start a song.

I worked on designing flows for some of the major use cases, such as searching for a specific genre like country, jazz, or pop. To create comprehensive flows, I documented: (1) what the iHeartRadio app would say to the user, (2) what the user could say in response, (3) what corresponding text would display on the media console, and (4) what would happen if the user could not be understood or said an invalid command. Given that voice recognition was in its infancy at the time, a big challenge was helping users understand the limited number of possible voice commands. To address this, we designed a “welcome” flow for onboarding and a “help” flow, which the user could access at any time.

At launch in 2012, Ford was the first auto company to offer voice-command access to iHeartRadio. It was well received and continues to be used in Ford vehicles today.

Things I did: Voice UI Flows & Documentation