UX/UI
General Motors
Senior Product Designer
Automotive
Software Design
Product Design
Design System
My roles
UX Leadership: Led end-to-end UX for GM’s Themes app, designing customizable in-vehicle interfaces across Chevy, GMC, Buick, and Cadillac platforms.
Design Systems: Spearheaded a DesignOps effort to audit and standardize a multi-brand design system across 35+ infotainment apps, reducing inconsistencies and dev/design drift.
Collaborative Execution + Product Launch: Partnered with PMs, engineers, and researchers to deliver accessible, legally compliant UI solutions—ensuring production readiness and seamless QA handoff.
Strategy & Research: Conducted competitive benchmarking (BMW, Mercedes, Tesla, Lucid), synthesized persona data, and mapped experience gaps to prioritize roadmap features.
Product impacts
Visual Consistency: Reduced visual and interaction inconsistencies by 40% across GM’s in-vehicle ecosystem through design system standardization.
Time to Implement: Cut design-to-development handoff time by 30% via detailed specs, Figma documentation, and design token alignment.
User Personalization: Enhanced driver satisfaction and engagement by enabling personalized themes that adjusted UI color, layout, and cluster logic.
Accessibility Compliance: Achieved WCAG 2.1 AA compliance and legal standards for contrast and iconography, minimizing legal risk across global markets.
This case study explores how a component-based design system and accessibility-focused UX helped modernize GM’s themes application across multiple vehicle brands.
Situation
The GM Themes app lets drivers personalize the look and feel of their in-vehicle infotainment system.
This redesign focused on simplifying customization and enhancing the overall user experience.
It involved extensive user research, iterative prototyping, and usability testing, launching to the public in a 2024 Cadillac Lyriq.
The 2024 Cadillac Lyriq displaying the “Tagged” theme
This case study explores how a component-based design system and accessibility-focused UX helped modernize GM’s themes application across multiple vehicle brands.
The Situation: GM Themes App 1.0 (It had no dedicated UX)
The work focused on an improved in-vehicle experience whilst using the Themes app, across all of GM’s brands. It would address in-app challenges such as:
Clunky UI and experience: Given the application was new to GM, the UX/UI never got a dedicated designer, resulting in a quickly put-together application without a thoughtful design.
Lack of real-time feedback: No preview before applying a theme, no animations, no haptic feedback.
Inconsistent UI across brands: Chevrolet, GMC, Cadillac, and Buick all had varying designs due to screen sizing and branding, making the experience incoherent.
Overall Poor UX: To enhance the user experience, the Themes App needed a redesign - one that prioritized user experience, brand consistency, and usability across all GM vehicles.
Task: Let’s recap and define success up front.
What should the final solution look like?
Redesign the UI: Create a cohesive, visually appealing interface across all GM brands.
Rethink the UX and functionality features of the themes app.
Simplify customization: Reduce the steps required to select and apply a theme.
Rebuild the in-app assets: New components, features, deep-linkage to other GM apps
Ideate and design live theme previews: Enable real-time theme visualization before applying or purchasing.
Performance optimization: Reduce loading times and improve overall app stability.
Expand theme options: Introduce seasonal and branded themes.
Standardize the experience: Ensure design consistency across vehicle models, screen sizes, physical controllers and brands
Tackle corner cases and UX for notifications (this was ever evolving over a 3 year time frame)
Have fun and think outside the box!
Design Process:
How did I do it
User-Centric Design: Collaborated with users to prioritize features and enhancements based on their feedback and pain points.
Iterative Prototyping: Developed wireframes and prototypes to test new designs and iterate based on user feedback.
User Research: User research was conducted through interviews, surveys, and usability tests to understand user preferences, pain points, and needs related to infotainment system customization. Key insights revealed a desire for more themes, simplified customization options, and improved performance.
Competitive Analysis: Analyzed similar apps in the automotive industry to identify best practices and areas for improvement.
Visual Design: Created a modern and visually appealing interface with a wide variety of themes, wallpapers, and customization options to enhance user engagement.
Simplified Customization: Refined the user interface and reorganized settings to make customization intuitive and user-friendly, with clear explanations and visual cues.
Enhanced Preview Functionality: Developed an interactive preview feature that allows users to visualize themes in real-time on their vehicle's dashboard.
Performance Optimization: Conducted testing and optimization to improve app performance, reduce loading times, and address bugs and crashes.
Usability Testing: Tested the app with real users to gather insights on navigation, theme selection, customization options, and overall usability.
Utilizing “benches” to emulate the applications in real time.
We tested the app with real users and employees to gather insights on navigation, theme selection, customization options, and overall usability.
My Roles + Discovery
Domain, field research, and competitive analysis: Dove deep into existing domain knowledge, and uncovered customer insights through extensive field research and competitive analysis (both digitally, and in-vehicle)
Discovery: In order to familiarize myself with the Themes domain, I gathered information from a broad array of internal sources, from conventional experts such as other domain owners, to first-hand usability testing in existing vehicles (both General Motors and competitors).
Discovery pt. 2: The amount of user research we already had at General Motors was absurd. I easily spent a solid month just going over data we had accumulated from internal and external users.
Ideation and visioning: Synthesized key findings from qualitative research data, and converted them into low and high fidelity designs.
Design execution & experience strategy: Created wireframes, mockups, and high-fidelity prototypes ensuring alignment with the feature/project goals.
Design execution & validation: Produced high-fidelity designs, prototypes, and detailed design specifications.
Leadership: Presented ideas internally and led design critiques within the team to drive decision-making. Documented and presented the ideas to higher management and product owners.
Implementation: Worked with a development team and contributed directly to QA testing, ensuring the successful realization of my designs.
Themes Mental Model Report (Interviewing 9 participants)
(this was done to understand how users classified Themes, Modes, Experiences, and Routines)
7/9 described themes as a cohesive message or category that explains how individual things relate to one another:
“It’s a bunch of things that make sense, that are in a way related. Like the same color or the same topic.” — P1
“To me it’s just what's going on in the background that people may want to get across.” — P7
2/9 described overarching themes in their personal lives:
P5 on getting a new pet: “It’s a mix of both emotions and chapters of your life. It overlays what you’re doing in the moment. ...Excitement toward purchasing a dog, starting a new chapter of my life. I’m really eager, excited. Now I have this new pet in my life that I have to take care of. It’s that excitement and the additional responsibility.”
“Another theme is someone’s values and beliefs — maintaining a healthy lifestyle. Maybe the theme is them working out on a regular basis. A rigorous workout routine relates to the theme of health and wellness.” — P4
Theme examples often revolved around arts & entertainment
When providing examples outside the vehicle context, 4/9 described themes within the Arts — books, movies, music, paintings.
4/9 used entertainment-related examples of themes they’ve seen at parties or theme parks.
3/9 described decorations as themes, including clothing and home or store décor.
3/9 provided theme examples from digital products, including web design, phone wallpapers, and social media page themes.
Internal User Research
User research was conducted through interviews, personas, surveys, and usability tests to understand user preferences, pain points, and needs related to infotainment system customization. Key insights revealed a desire for more themes, simplified customization options, and improved performance.
User Research: We gathered insights from GM vehicle owners via interviews and surveys to understand their needs and frustrations with the existing GM Themes app. Usability tests were conducted to observe user interactions and identify areas for improvement.
Competitive Analysis: We analyzed competing infotainment customization apps to benchmark against industry standards, identify best practices, and uncover areas for differentiation. This provided insights into competitor offerings, feature sets, and user experiences.
Usability Testing: Prototype versions of the redesigned GM Themes app were tested with real users to gather feedback on navigation, theme selection, customization options, and overall usability. This iterative process helped validate design decisions and address usability issues.
Classification of Features: There was little agreement in how to classify in-vehicle features. We have Themes, Drive Modes, Experiences, and Ambient Lighting that all needed to either live by themselves, or deep link with others.
GM Themes App User Flow
Although the user journey got altered once new features and themes were designed, it still followed the main structure outlined above.
Outcome: GM Themes App
While the Themes app at General Motors is beginning it’s rollout on it’s full fleet of vehicles,
It is currently only available on the 2024 Cadillac Lyriq.
Please message me for more screenshots.
A selected card has a transparent background, which allows that card to display the background of the current theme.
One of the themes displaying across the 55” display
A theme against the home screen display - adhering to contrast rules, natural sunlight, and overall visibility
Designing Themes in regulation with contrast ratio rules
Outcome Continued
Expanded Theme Library: Introduce a wider variety of themes and wallpapers, including seasonal themes, branded collaborations, and user-generated content to cater to diverse user preferences.
Simplified Customization: Streamline the customization process by reorganizing settings and options into intuitive categories, with clear explanations and tool tips for each feature.
Enhanced Preview Functionality: Implement a comprehensive preview feature that allows users to visualize how each theme will look on their vehicle's dashboard in real-time, with interactive elements and dynamic animations.
Regular Updates and Releases: Establish a consistent schedule for releasing new themes, wallpapers, and app updates, accompanied by notifications or alerts to notify users of new content.
Performance Optimization: Address performance issues by optimizing app performance, reducing loading times, and resolving bugs or crashes through rigorous testing and debugging.
Utilizing “benches” to emulate the applications in real time.
We tested the app with real users and employees to gather insights on navigation, theme selection, customization options, and overall usability.
Learning outcomes
(designing across all 4 brands takes consistency)
The redesign ensured that the Themes application reflects GM's brand values and personality throughout the user journey. From the app icon to the login screen and its interface, every aspect of the app was designed to reinforce GM's brand identity and evoke a sense of trust and familiarity among users.
Consistent use of brand elements such as logos, slogans, and imagery helped strengthen the connection between the app and GM's broader brand ecosystem.
This was all done while constantly checking into each brand’s library in the design system, updating colors, typography, and everything in between.
Product Designer
