A Play of Brilliants

Project Timeline: 2021.9 - 2022.2

Project goal

Transparent and empathetic companionship

At Didi, our mission is : make every journey a joyride. We envision long-lasting bonds between drivers and their vehicles—ones that turn every trip into a moment of connection and delight. This smart EV is an attentive and empathetic companion - bonding with users through transparent communication and emotionally supportive experiences.

Light, as a medium of interaction

In 'A Play of Brilliants', we introduce light as the language of our car’s soul. Our project addresses transparency and empathy through three key aspects: language, intention, and emotion.

Language

The ‘Face’ of a Car

According to Windhager et al. (2008), people tend to perceive car fronts as having facial features and consistently attribute personality traits to them based on their shape, paralleling the perception of human faces. Car traits varied mainly along dimensions of 'power', such as maturity, and 'sociability', such as happiness.

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We designed a unique 'language' for the vehicle’s front lighting, enabling it to simulate facial expressions. This leverages people’s natural ability to recognize facial cues, allowing the car to convey emotions and be perceived as a companion.

Balance between expressiveness and road safety

We carefully balance the expressiveness of anthropomorphic design with the critical requirements of legislation and safety. Main consideration is the different brightness levels, colors, spatial positions, and light-up patterns of each lighting component. For example, expressive lighting such as ‘crying’ or ‘sorry’ is restricted to stationary scenarios. Expressions like ‘charging’, viewed by the owner from a near distance, are designed with components providing dimmed brightness. Expressions used for communicating with other drivers, such as ‘focus’ or ‘sorry’, are designed with simple light-up patterns to avoid interfering with the sliding pattern of the turn signal.

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Intention

We designed the car to project subtle visual cues that communicate its intentions.

Pedestrian Safety

Rasouli (2018) noted that the lack of social understanding and effective communication can contribute to traffic conflicts and accidents involving pedestrians.

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Emotion

Imagine driving along a coastal road at sunset. The car’s interior lighting seamlessly adapts to the dimming environment. The mixed reality projector overlays the windshield with the sunset and clouds, bringing you the feeling of ‘open-air’ even while sitting inside.

The design prioritizes principles from ‘Calm Technology’ - being unobtrusive and adaptive. A combined algorithm, based on environmental lighting, mood, and user preferences, will determine the activation of projectors and LEDs, making the interior environment anticipate needs and be emotionally engaging.

The spatial arrangement of LEDs is designed with reference to theater lighting.

Calm Technology

Mark Weiser and John Seely Brown introduced the concept of ‘calm technology’ (1996), refers to an approach to design technology to be unobtrusive, minimally disruptive and seamlessly integrated into user’s environment.

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Theater Lighting

Palmer (2013) studied how lighting draws the audience's gaze, evokes responses, and elevates storytelling through colors, areas of spotlights, and shadows.

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Impact

In August 2024, Xpeng unveiled the MONA M03—a sleek sophisticated electric vehicle priced at RMB 119,800 ($16,839). Within the first 48 hours, 30,000 firm orders poured in. Media outlets dubbed it “Like a Tesla, but at half the price”. It’s a compliment that sticks, and customers are nodding in agreement, applauding the car’s aesthetic charm and intelligent features.

Reflection

Personally, I love this project very much. It wasn’t about delivering a aesthetic pleasing design, it was about giving the design a sense of emotional awareness—a companion for the road rather than a mere machine. This journey gave me a firsthand experience of the complexity that comes with applying interaction designs to the real world. We had to refine and adapt our vision multiple times with restrictions—cost considerations, legislative barriers, engineering hurdles. After the concept stage and review of higher managers, some automatic features and lightings were toned down, to strike a balance in the production cost and give customers the best possible value without compromising on quality. Working with a team of like-minded designers, all united under the same vision, was a privilege. Every member brought their expertise to the table, ensuring that interior design, exterior design and HMIs remained faithful to our goal.