Project Overview

The MINI Intelligent Personal Assistant represents a bold leap forward in character-driven, human-vehicle interaction, bringing the iconic, playful personality of the MINI brand into the digital age. Deployed on MINI Operating System 9 and rendered on the industry-first, circular MINI Interaction Unit (OLED display), the system introduces a context-aware voice assistant designed to feel like a true co-pilot.

Users can interact through natural, conversational language to effortlessly control climate systems (like “Max AC” or heating specific seats), window positions, and navigation. The experience becomes deeply personalized, allowing users to choose between a classic, stylized visual wave or Spike – MINI’s charming digital canine companion.

My Contribution & Impact

As the Lead UX Designer for Display & Interaction GUI Concepts and Pre-Development UX Team Lead for the speech-interaction stream, I designed and architected how this sophisticated AI behaves, functions, and expresses itself visually and acoustically within the unique constraints of MINI’s circular display architecture and distinctive brand language.

Key Achievements:

• Circular HMI & Avatar Integration: I designed the UX frameworks and behavioral patterns for the circular MINI Interaction Unit, defining how both the classic speech waves and the animated Spike avatar transition smoothly across UI states and widget structures.

• Multimodal Feedback Systems & Strategic Patent (US 12,570,211 B2): Leveraging my patented HMI system, I led the shift toward dynamic, context-adaptive soundscapes and visual feedback systems to reduce driver cognitive load while executing complex speech tasks.

• Dynamic Layer-Priority & Active-Voice Overlays: I architected robust, layer-priority logic to elegantly handle voice interactions, legal notifications, and driving overlays on the central round display, preserving visual clarity and system transparency during active dialogues.

• Interactive Onboarding & Personalized Widget Structures:
  I led the UX design of the speech-interaction onboard wizard and the home-screen widgets, which offer contextual system suggestions and “what can I do?” tutorials to drive customer engagement and feature discoverability.

• Rapid Prototyping & AI Workshops: I spearheaded interactive pre-development prototypes in high-fidelity environments, using them to gather actionable user research data, align stakeholders, and establish strategic AI prototyping frameworks within the department.