Project Eevee
Making a connected car feel like part of the home.
A personal ambient-computing experiment connecting a Kia EV6 to Apple Home, Siri, HomePod, Apple Watch, and Homebridge. Project Eevee turns a slow, app-centric vehicle routine into a voice- and state-driven interaction that feels native to the home.
Scope Note: A personal ambient-computing experiment tested in my own environment with a 2024 Kia EV6 GT-Line. It provides near-immediate HomeKit acknowledgement with asynchronous vehicle confirmation through a cloud-connected vehicle telematics workflow.
The Car Was Connected. The Experience Was Not.
When I began living with the EV6, my core intention was simple: “Make the car comfortable before I get in.”
Yet living with a modern connected electric vehicle revealed a sharp disconnect between technical capability and everyday experience. The car possessed cellular telematics and remote climate hardware, but triggering it required an awkward chain of attention: stopping what I was doing, unlocking my phone, waiting through slow cold-starts and biometric authentication, digging through nested sub-menus, and staring at a loading spinner hoping the command wouldn’t drop.
The car was connected to the internet, but completely isolated from my domestic routine.
App-First & Fragmented
- 01Stop what I am doing and reach for my phone
- 02Find and open the vehicle app
- 03Wait through startup and sign-in friction
- 04Navigate into the climate controls
- 05Send the request and wait for a state change
Ambient & Domestic
- 01Speak intent naturally: “Hey Siri, turn on Eevee Climate”
- 02Receive near-immediate local acknowledgement
- 03A secure bridge carries the request into the vehicle workflow
- 04The vehicle begins its climate routine
- 05Walk out to a prepared cabin without spending time in an app
One Intent, Several Systems.
To make the vehicle feel like part of the home, I designed a translation layer between familiar home interactions and a cloud-connected vehicle workflow. The design challenge was not simply sending a request. It was making the handoff feel natural, legible, and trustworthy across systems that resolve at different speeds.
The Interface Could Be Fast. The Vehicle Could Not.
The primary interaction-design insight of Project Eevee is asymmetric latency.
“The interaction can acknowledge intent immediately. The vehicle should confirm only when the physical action resolves.”
A voice request can be acknowledged almost immediately, while a vehicle may need longer to receive, begin, and confirm a physical action. That difference is not a flaw to hide. It is a condition the experience needs to communicate well.
Rather than forcing a person to wait through the physical delay, or pretending the vehicle response is instant, I separated perceived interface responsiveness from asynchronous physical completion.
Tested Personal System
Live Testing in a Private Routine
This ambient-computing system is built, tested, and actively lived with in my personal environment. As the experiment evolves, this page will document privacy-safe evidence of isolated watch states, home-accessory states, and ambient voice acknowledgement.
Systems Design Beyond Screens
Project Eevee is a proof-of-concept for how systems design applies to ambient, multi-device, real-world problems.
Ambient Interaction
I designed a daily routine around natural human intention rather than forcing attention into a dedicated smartphone application.
Cross-System Translation
I brought together familiar home interactions and a cloud-connected vehicle workflow into one coherent experience.
Asynchronous Experience Design
I made delayed physical outcomes legible and trustworthy without making the immediate voice interaction feel sluggish or broken.
Systems Thinking Beyond Screens
I orchestrated a cohesive outcome across voice, home context, and delayed vehicle state.
“Project Eevee is a small personal system with a larger design question inside it: what happens when the best interface is not another screen, but a reliable translation between intent, environment, and physical state?”