Project Overview

Cautious Mode is a vehicle safety feature developed to offer customizable driving settings for vehicle owners who lend their cars to novice drivers, elderly family members, or anyone with aggressive driving habits. The goal was to create a user-friendly system that enhances safety and provides peace of mind when sharing the car by allowing the owner to control parameters like acceleration, speed, volume, and geofencing.

Introduction

Vehicle sharing often raises concerns about safety and responsibility. Cautious Mode addresses these challenges by offering a fully customizable framework for managing how a vehicle is driven. The feature combines real-time monitoring and driver-specific restrictions, creating a secure driving experience for both owners and borrowers.

Team Involvement

The Cautious Mode project was carried out by a well-structured team within Zeekr's Product Area Team. This structure ensured collaboration across key roles, ensuring technical feasibility and alignment with business goals.

Product Area Team:

Product Area Manager (PAM): Oversaw the roadmap and prioritized the product area from a business and market perspective, ensuring alignment with the overall Zeekr strategy.
UX (My Role): As the Senior UX Designer, I was responsible for defining the overall user experience of Cautious Mode, ensuring that the feature met user needs while aligning with technical and business goals. I collaborated closely with stakeholders, conducted user research, facilitated workshops, and designed intuitive solutions that balanced usability and functionality.
Function Domain Owner (FDO): Defined use cases, assessed technical feasibility, and delivered Function Design Alternatives (FDA) to guide development.

Feature Teams:

Function Owner (FO): Managed detailed function descriptions and failure modes, producing Function Design Requirements (FDR).
System Owner (SO): Allocated functionality to ECUs, created signal maps and ensured alignment with vehicle systems.
ECU Owner (EO): Managed ECU-specific tasks and functionality integration.
Function Tester: Verified that the feature performed as intended and met all requirements.

Additional Roles:

Product Owner (PO): Managed the in-house software development process and maintained the technical backlog.
Development Team: Implemented software solutions and ensured that designs were translated into functioning code.

This structured collaboration between product area teams, feature teams, and platform/project teams ensured that Cautious Mode was seamlessly integrated into Zeekr's vehicles while maintaining a high standard of safety and usability.

Methods & Tools

User Research:
Conducted PoolFish surveys to gather insights from car owners about their concerns when sharing vehicles. This helped us prioritize features like speed control, acceleration limits, and geofencing.
Stakeholder Interviews:
Collaborated with product managers, engineers, and safety experts to understand business goals and ensure technical feasibility.
A/B Testing:
We tested multiple interface designs to evaluate user preferences for adjusting settings, such as sliders for speed and toggles for acceleration restrictions.
Validation Workshops: Collaborated with stakeholders to refine features and ensure alignment with safety regulations.
Benchmarking: Compared similar features in competitor systems for improvement opportunities.
Tools Used:
- Figma: For wireframing, prototyping, and UI design.
- Confluence: For documentation and team collaboration.
- Jira: For task tracking and progress management.
- FigJam: For brainstorming and creativity.
- Teams: For communication and collaboration across the organization.

Discovery

Through surveys and interviews, we identified key concerns among vehicle owners, such as speeding, unauthorized use, and distractions. Our insights revealed the need for real-time monitoring, clear configurations, and borrower accountability.

*Disclaimer: Images are intentionally low resolution to maintain confidentiality and protect sensitive details.

Use Cases

To illustrate how Cautious Mode addresses user needs, consider the scenario of Sarah and her daughter Emily:

Sarah often lends her car to Emily, a newly licensed driver. To ensure safety and control, Sarah activates Cautious Mode via the ZEEKR app, configuring:

Speed Limit: 120 km/h to prevent overspeeding.
Acceleration Adjustment: Reduced for smoother handling.
Geofencing: Restricted to the neighborhood and school area.
Sound Volume Cap and Device Pairing Disabled: To minimize distractions.

During the trip, Sarah monitors the car’s location and usage through the app, receiving notifications about adherence to the configured restrictions. This example showcases how Cautious Mode promotes safety, accountability, and peace of mind.

Ideation and Design

Early drafts explored user flows and feature configurations, emphasizing simplicity. Interactive prototypes showcased intuitive setups for geofencing, speed limits, and acceleration control.

Validation

We tested the feature with stakeholders and target users to refine interaction patterns and ensure technical feasibility. Feedback emphasized the importance of real-time monitoring and clear, actionable alerts.

*Disclaimer: Images are intentionally low resolution to maintain confidentiality and protect sensitive details.

Final Design

The finalized design showcases the complete user journey, from activating Cautious Mode in the app to monitoring real-time trips. The key screens and functionalities include the following:

Car Sharing Invitation and Settings: Owners can invite borrowers to use the vehicle and configure Cautious Mode settings, such as speed limits and acceleration adjustments.
Configuring Restrictions: Options include setting maximum speed, adjusting acceleration for smoother handling, and enabling real-time monitoring.
Borrower’s Driving Experience and Notifications: Clear instructions on active restrictions guide borrowers, while owners receive alerts about adherence to configured settings.

At this stage of development, the geofence functionality was not yet included in the design. Based on feedback from stakeholders and user research, the decision was made to implement geofencing in a later iteration. This iterative approach allowed the team to prioritize delivering a core set of features while leaving room for future enhancements.

The final design balanced user needs with technical feasibility, ensuring an intuitive, user-centric experience that could be expanded upon in subsequent updates.

Mother’s Flow

Daughter’s Flow

Key Takeaways

User-Centric Design: Addressing specific user concerns with thoughtful, tailored solutions.
Collaboration for Success: Cross-functional alignment ensured feasibility and usability.
Iterative Refinement: Feedback loops improved the design’s clarity and efficiency.

Outcome

Cautious Mode was launched in a beta version and is currently being tested by Zeekr ambassadors. Early feedback from this select group has been overwhelmingly positive. Vehicle owners appreciate the added peace of mind with features like speed control and monitoring, while borrowers find the restrictions supportive rather than restrictive, helping them build safer driving habits.

This controlled rollout allows Zeekr to gather valuable insights and refine the feature before a broader release, ensuring it meets the high standards of usability and practicality that users expect. The ambassadors’ enthusiasm highlights the potential for Cautious Mode to become a key feature in Zeekr’s ecosystem, promoting safe and responsible driving for all users.

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