D-Ford Design Labs: EV Truck Dashboard Experience
Next-Generation Digital Experience Design for Ford’s Innovation Lab
Strategic Product Design for Commercial Vehicles
Designed next-generation dashboard interfaces for Ford’s EV truck targeting small business drivers and contractors, focusing on productivity and safety optimization during job site operations. Collaborated across Communication Design, Interaction Design, and Business Design teams within Ford’s innovation lab environment.
My Role: UX/UI Design Intern | 12 weeks | Summer 2022
Innovation Lab Experience
During my internship with D-Ford’s Activation team, I worked on creating digital experiences for Ford’s next-generation commercial vehicle dashboard. The project centered on understanding how small business owners and contractors interact with vehicle interfaces during work operations, balancing productivity needs with safety requirements.
The role involved analyzing existing user research data to inform design decisions, developing comprehensive user journeys that reflected real-world job site scenarios, and creating information architecture that could scale across different commercial vehicle applications. Working within Ford’s design system constraints while pushing for innovative interface solutions required careful balance between creativity and technical feasibility.
Design Process & Cross-Functional Collaboration
Enterprise Design System Integration
Working within Ford’s established design system required understanding how individual interface components fit into the broader vehicle ecosystem. The challenge was pushing creative boundaries while maintaining consistency with Ford’s design language and ensuring compatibility with existing manufacturing and engineering constraints.
Learning to navigate enterprise design resources and ask strategic questions proved crucial for contributing meaningfully to the project. The process involved understanding not just the visual design system, but also the business rationale behind design decisions and how they scaled across Ford’s commercial vehicle portfolio.
Strategic Project Management
Managing deliverables for executive review while supporting multiple cross-functional teams required careful prioritization and timeline coordination. The experience included participating in Ford’s intern hackathon, where our team won the popular vote award, demonstrating the ability to innovate within compressed timeframes while maintaining design quality.
The internship highlighted how design work at scale requires balancing individual contribution with team objectives, especially when working across Communication Design, Interaction Design, and Business Design disciplines.
Iterative Design in Enterprise Context
The corporate environment reinforced the importance of continuous feedback integration and design iteration. Regular design critiques with senior designers helped refine both the interface solutions and the strategic thinking behind design decisions.
Working within Ford’s innovation lab meant embracing ambiguity while maintaining focus on user needs and business objectives. The experience demonstrated how enterprise design requires flexibility to adapt to changing requirements while maintaining design integrity and user-centered principles.
Impact & Professional Development
This Ford innovation lab experience provided deep exposure to enterprise-scale design thinking and cross-functional collaboration in the automotive industry. Working on commercial vehicle interfaces for small business users highlighted the importance of understanding diverse user contexts and the complex technical constraints involved in automotive interface design.
The hackathon victory demonstrated the ability to rapidly prototype innovative solutions while working within Ford’s design and business constraints. Most importantly, the internship reinforced how strategic design thinking applies to complex product ecosystems where user experience, business objectives, and technical feasibility must align.
This experience showcased how design leadership operates within Fortune 500 innovation environments, balancing creative problem-solving with enterprise-scale constraints and cross-functional collaboration requirements.