In July 2017 after watching the Tesla Model 3 Delivery Event where Tesla delivered 30 cars to employees I felt a little underwhelmed by the lack of information. I wanted to know more about the car and it's unique user interface. In one of the biggest shake ups in the automotive industry Tesla took the bold decision to design their Model 3 with no buttons other than the absolutely essential. A decision which polarised opinions and piqued my interest. With some Model 3 reservation holders having to wait up to another 18 months to receive their car I set about recreating the UI using Sketch and InVision from footage in some blurry videos from Test Drives at the event.
I started by watching as many Test Drive videos as I could find on YouTube, thankfully some guests and vloggers like Tesla Bjorn had detailed footage of the dashboard.
Over two evenings I rapidly sketched out all the UI elements I could see in the videos. I wanted to create a UI that was as interactive as possible to give everyone a good idea of how it worked, but this meant creating over 30+ screens for as many scenarios as possible.
After recreating the components, switches and buttons as accurately as I could I started working on the interactivity. I utilised Craft by InVision as it enables me to create and prototype interfaces like this easily and efficiently.
For anyone wanting to play about with the Tesla Model 3 UI I recreated a very rough version from videoshttps://t.co/VB17DlsDeO #model3 pic.twitter.com/4HsVMEK8QC
— Andrew Goodlad (@Ichorus) August 2, 2017
I considered tweeting the design out, possibly tagging Tesla or a few publications, but I was unsure about this. I wasn't sure how Tesla would react to me offering up their user interface for all to see when they had been tight lipped, I felt it might have a negative impact. So instead I tweeted it without tags and then posted it on the Tesla Reddit channel not expecting a big reaction. Thousands of Tesla Model 3 reservation holders, Designers and tech sites began interacting and sharing the InVision Prototype. One of the first to get in touch directly was Tesla themselves, saying that they really liked it, Phew!
If you would like to know more about this strange and exciting experience please check out InVision's Blog. You can also play about with the interactive mock here.
Many designers have suggested moving the navigation to the side of the driver (I have mocked this below - RHD) however this would require separation of key features for the passenger, the original argument being the driver would not have as far to reach. But in this layout the passenger might regularly obscure the drivers view of key information.
My suggestion would be to enable voice commands for all features (Pictured below - RHD). Currently you can only request directions and search for music.
As mentioned earlier the passenger could obscure the drivers information. This can happen a lot if the passenger is regularly changing music, it will fully obscure the navigations upcoming directions. I would suggest when obscured the directions will move to the "cards" on the drivers panel (pictured below - RHD).
