We looked at how Apple currently handles transitioning between devices with a series of features under the umbrella of Continuity. This feature, called Handoff, allows eligible apps to be moved, mid-process, to another Apple device.

Apple wants the VR space to be it’s own 'tangible' space that can augment and empower both real-world and digital interactions. They’ve evolved their design system (shown above) to work better in 3-dimensional spaces and have also researched how to utilize the series of outward-facing cameras for better perception and recognition of tiny hand gestures and motions.

We went through a series of brainstorming exercises ranging from journey maps to lotus blossoms, and ended up writing out a variety of text-based scenarios. After several discussions, and refining some of these scenarios, these are the directions that we agreed were both the most exciting but also the most plausible.

One of the major things that people are averse to is seeing “Settings” pages when talking about a new feature or concept. With that in mind, I made a quick proof of concept just to show what a user might actually encounter during the actual event.

As a team, we realized we would need a “home” for our concepts to work from, and agreed on a long, narrow screen for the meter with an iPad-sized screen for the center console, utilizing MagSafe connections to use whatever sized screens the owner would prefer.

With a revised concept of how the transition should actually occur, it quickly became apparent that the active process should take precedence over other tasks, i.e. a FaceTime call should become, hierarchically, the most important active app on the screen. With that in mind, we needed a way to move other apps out of the way.

Since the phone can be placed on the MagSafe dock and used as an additional screen, we can move the clock off of the main screen’s Tab Bar. This gives us plentiful space to move apps to the Tab Bar to form the equivalent of the Dock, which is in familiar use on many other Apple devices. This change means that the active process can now utilize the entirety of the screen.

It took some time for the design system to really come together. We started with colors, since Apple has a really well defined color system. In the context of vehicles, however, colors have really important meanings. We set up our color system to set aside alert colors (red, orange, and yellow) as well as the normal vs. autonomous colors (blue and purple) so we could start figuring out the rest of our available options and uses.

To reflect the combined heritage of Apple’s iOS and Apple Vision design systems, there’s a strong use of cards to define layouts, iconography, and rounded visual language for clickable items.

Like many of Apple’s features (such as Apple ID and Continuity) the magic is happening behind the scenes, and adjustments have to be made in Settings and Profiles. Showing a Settings page is a boring way to promote a new concept, especially because it’s not the part that will be most interacted with. This prototype shows how the actual user experience will play out.