During the last conversations I had about design and innovation, it wasn’t difficult to hear something like “That’s not what our user wants.” This leads to a large number of projects with high potential being wasted. Spend as much time interpreting the problems as identifying them.

If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses. 
— Henry Ford.

This phrase is very important when you think about a product for a car manufacturer. It’s important to remember how the automotive industry emerged, and only by thinking this way will we be able to reinvent it.

What is the biggest problem with driving? Traffic.

How could we have ignored the biggest problem affecting your users? Can we solve traffic in its existential form? Unfortunately, not in the short term, but we can make this experience much more comfortable and productive.

Another important fact about solving this type of problem: Companies don’t want to solve problems that are not directly related to them. Any telecommunications company could have created WhatsApp or a direct competitor, but they don’t want to leave the comfort of selling calls, messages, and internet the way they have been doing for years. The same can be applied to the automotive market, where traffic seems like a problem that is not the direct responsibility of the manufacturers.

Shall we solve traffic?

What is the difference between spending 2 hours in traffic or 2 hours watching a movie? Or reading a book? In both scenarios, you are “stopped” in one place. The difference is that people feel that the time spent in their cars is wasted time. And indeed it is. You have to stay focused on the road, even knowing that you’ll probably only have to move a few meters every 5 minutes. So, you end up dedicating yourself entirely to this task and doing nothing useful or pleasant because you can’t look to the side or pick up your phone. The car is like an elevator for your digital life; from the moment you get in, you are offline, you are completely powerless because you can’t do anything, can’t escape, can’t free yourself from it.

The car is like an elevator for your digital life.

From the moment you manage to bring an experience where the user can continue their life during those 2 hours, whether with a voice system or a self-driving car, you eliminate traffic from someone’s life. This can even change the way people behave before getting into their cars. Maybe they won’t have to wait until the last minute to get in, and they won’t be late for their appointments anymore?

Don’t be afraid to look silly.

Think about how we are used to such annoying details in our daily lives and always let them slide. You can’t get comfortable with what you go through every day. This is the role of a product designer.

At times like these, when you propose ideas to solve these problems, don’t be afraid. Your boss may think you’re an idiot, or your client may think you’re crazy. But that’s easy to recover from. What’s really difficult is coming up with something predictable and convincing people that you’re capable of more. At the very least, be known for needing to land.

No, I don’t want millions of cars on the streets and more traffic.

As a next step, automakers and countries need to be ready for a system of shared and autonomous cars, where we won’t have to worry about all the obstacles that have been created over the years to own a car. Since I moved to Rio de Janeiro, I have had zero desire to own a car, due to all the expenses, stress in traffic, and difficulty in parking that I would have. Today, I only use public transportation, supplemented by some Uber rides when necessary. But is that what we want as well? Having to request and wait for a car… remember the little things every day?

The biggest challenge for automakers in the near future will be adapting to this kind of thinking. What will be our next fastest horse?