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Garmin built the head unit and the companion app for an upcoming Yamaha two-wheeler as an OEM partner. The head unit touchscreen locks while the vehicle is in motion, so riders can only control it through hard keys on the handlebar. The supporting companion app connects to the head unit to reach online services, map purchased, and location transfers.
Role: Product Designer
Collaborators: Product Owner, Product Designers, UI Designer, Software Engineers
Platform: Two-wheeler Head Unit, Companion Mobile App
Scope: Features Design, Cross-Device Flows
Timeline: 3 months
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My Role
I owned 8 navigation map tools on the head unit. On the companion app, I owned the transfer flow that sends a route file or a location to the vehicle.
I collaborated with the 3 other product designers through a shared component library to keep the design language consistent, handed off the wireframes and flows to our UI designer for visual execution, and worked with the engineering team to refine and fit the features within system constraints.
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For the upcoming generation of the Yamaha two-wheelers, we designed a new head unit and the companion app to support it.
Head Unit Safety Restrictions. The touchscreen locks once the vehicle exceeds 3 km/h, and functions that might cause distraction had to be disabled to keep the rider's attention. Key features had to be controllable through a five-way key and a back key on the left handlebar.
Companion App Connectivity. The head unit cannot reach the network or handle purchases, so it depends on the mobile companion app for anything beyond navigation. Features like map purchases, vehicle management, and location file transfers all start on the app, and online information such as traffic and group ride tracking also reaches the head unit through it.
A rider moves between the two devices without thinking about which one is doing the work, so the flows had to hold together across both.