Is It Worth Collaborating with External Teams for HMI Design?

I've often heard about car manufacturers hiring hundreds of designers and engineers to create the world's best HMI (Human-machine interaction). Management believes they will save money, but instead, the company's costs rise, and even though hundreds to thousands of employees work hard, project deliveries are delayed, and only a fraction of the work is completed. Does this sound familiar?

Let's take a closer look at why such things happen.

Internal Team

In my opinion, an internal design team is essential. Its importance lies mainly in coordination and project management. …I don't envy them because they spend most of their time in hundreds of meetings, solving dozens of minor and major problems at any moment. And this can't be changed, they are members of huge organizations and must keep the internal processes up and running.

On the other side, they are excellent designers! I emphasise that they must be amazing because they are the ambassadors of the company's highest quality and first-class design.

Just remember, OEMs (original equipment manufacturers) have always masterfully managed and assembled their cars from components provided by thousands of suppliers, from plastics to screws. HMI design is just another piece of this puzzle. They know how to build beautiful cars, they are just somehow limited in their flexibility.

External Team

Don't confuse external teams with traditional vendors; I will address their differences in another post.

Here, we will discuss modern design firms with highly specialized experts available on demand. The advantage of these expert teams is that, as a customer, you have access to fresh, motivated specialists with a wealth of experience from various projects, ready at a moment's notice. Because these experts work in their special area of expertise and only for the necessary duration, they can deliver work up to six times faster. This saves time and money and can even motivate the internal team as they can get new perspectives on how things can be done. The efficiency of such external experts lies in their broad knowledge, similar to that of generalists.

Moreover, modern companies train experts in project management and quality assurance techniques, enabling them to work independently. Competition is accelerating; today, there is no time for slow development and building bureaucratic structures. Flexibility is essential, as is expanding or changing the team as needed. External experts can exactly add such values to the internal team.

Effective Collaboration Between Modern Firm and Internal Team

Recently, I experienced how a lead designer of a car company got the task of redesigning (reskinning) the company's HMI design. Additionally, he had to develop a strategic vision and lead the rest of the internal team. Phew… he solved it cleverly and elegantly, focusing only on the project goal! For the routine expert work involving thousands of minor tasks, such as creating icons, styles, skinning, and naming files in the database, …he brought in a modern external firm, which promptly provided an experienced specialist and delivered those tasks in time and within budget.

The advantage of a modern vendor is that they have specialists and professionals. Our mentioned external specialist asked for access to the materials and reviewed the project. Thanks to his experience, he could start designing immediately because he had already handled similar work many times. He delivered the work up to six times faster, avoided mistakes, and saved time. The internal lead designer of the car company only instructed and supervised our specialist to ensure the project goals were met. The work was delivered in record time, effortlessly.

On the other hand, an unfortunate example of wasted energy, time, and money was a project where the internal designer of the car company wanted to design everything himself, in good faith, to save the budget. He began designing the interactive control models of the car. After three months of attempts and internal consultations, he created three designs that have been tested for intuitive control. After a week of testing, the usability results returned at 47%, 58%, and 53% …no clear outcome, a stalemate! Supervisors and department managers were unsure about the presented designs and started proposing solutions. It resulted in chaos and endless testing, and the entire project eventually involved dozens of people, not to mention the increased budget. The team's demotivation and the dozens of sleepless nights of the team and managers extended the project from two to eight months.

Do you know how to Work Efficiently?

Today, under competitive pressure, it is necessary to speed up development, maintain quality, and stick to the budget. There is no longer time to wait for someone to learn on the job and hope that a novice will design work like an expert. The "Hoping" approach is slow, expensive, and very risky.

The fastest and most successful projects are those where the car manufacturer lets internal teams focus on internal communication, project goals, and strategy. Modern suppliers with specialists can flexibly guarantee expert work's quality and timely delivery. Cooperation between internal teams and experienced professionals with the know-how and experts in the subject matter is up to six times faster! Be flexible! Rigidity is death.

Tell me about your experiences. How does performance pressure affect your work? How do you plan to keep up with other car manufacturers?

‍