Jaguar Land Rover
Connected-vehicle control designed for the moments away from the wheel.
- Scope
- Connected-vehicle UX
- Platforms
- iOS and Android
- Partner
- Spark44
- Period
- 2016–2017
Context
The car was becoming a service people expected to reach from anywhere.
Jaguar Land Rover’s connected products extended vehicle status, management and ownership into iOS, Android and the customer portal. Drivers could be away from the vehicle but still needed to understand its condition, act on it and know whether a remote command had worked.
The work also had to span the ownership journey: saved configurations and retailers before purchase; vehicle information, guides, offers and alerts after it. The phone and portal were not companion marketing—they were part of the product experience.
Research and structure
Organise the experience around what the driver needs to know now.
User research and interviews defined the practical jobs behind the feature list. The customer-portal work, for example, identified needs ranging from pre-filled test-drive details and saved retailers to vehicle-specific guides, payment confirmation and relevant alerts.
Competitor analysis exposed familiar dashboard problems: information hidden behind icons, weak hierarchy, little help for first-time users and features that required data people had already supplied elsewhere. Those findings shaped the information architecture before detailed interaction work began.
- User research and interviews
- Customer and business goals
- Competitor analysis
- Information architecture
- Vehicle-management flows
- Executive stakeholder alignment
Key decisions
State first. Action second. Confirmation always.
Show the vehicle’s state
Put the information a driver needs on the surface rather than behind a row of feature icons. The current condition gives every action its context.
Explain remote commands
Make clear what the command will change before it is sent. Control at a distance carries more uncertainty than touching the vehicle itself.
Close the feedback loop
Distinguish sending, processing, success and failure. A tap is not proof that the car received or completed an instruction.
Personalise with known data
Use the person’s vehicle, saved configuration and preferred retailer to remove repeated entry and make guidance, alerts and offers relevant.
From flow to system
Keep a large connected product coherent as it changed.
The UX moved from flows and structure into interaction prototypes and detailed iOS and Android designs. A versioned master file—iterated through dozens of releases—held navigation, states and patterns together while requirements and stakeholder feedback evolved.
That system mattered across marques as well as platforms. The visual expression could vary, but the underlying logic for vehicle status, remote action and confirmation needed to stay dependable.
What was delivered
A connected-ownership framework, not a collection of remote controls.
The engagement produced researched customer goals, portal and vehicle-management architecture, detailed cross-platform UX and interaction prototypes. Together, the work treated connected services as one continuous relationship with the vehicle—from consideration through ownership.
First-party archive reviewed: customer-dashboard strategy, user and business goals, competitor analysis, vehicle-management masters and interaction prototype material.
Control at a distance still needs to feel connected to the car.