Conjure — the leading Android Automotive Agency
A wealth of in-car digital experiences and over a decade of building native Android applications puts Conjure at the forefront of next-generation in-vehicle experiences
Introduction
Since 2014, Conjure has worked with Automotive OEMs and Tier 1 electronics suppliers creating compelling, engaging and innovative digital experiences both in-car and out. Alongside this, our heritage and reputation as a premium mobile applications and digital product studio has continued to go from strength to strength. We now are at an inflection point, a combination of the most exciting opportunities that I have seen within the world of digital experiences and automotive and mobility.
I’m excited to speak about some of our recent work and I look forward to the upcoming opportunities with established OEMs, challenger manufacturers and product and service start-ups that are servicing the automotive and mobility sector.
Over the past two years, we have been evolving our service offering to include experience design and software development for Android Automotive OS, a variant of the Android Open Source Project (AOSP). For us, this is a natural convergence of our extensive experience within mobile applications and automotive HMI design and development. In this time we’ve undertaken a number of commercial projects developing proof-of-concept and production applications for a variety of clients that are looking to utilise the platform that AOSP provides.
What’s around the corner?
An AOSP-based project is not a trivial undertaking and whilst it provides a number of enticing advantages and opportunities, there are plenty of considerations; that through our experience we can help to highlight for your use case. One of the most exciting opportunities I foresee is how second and third-party vendors will be able to develop software that is much easier for carmakers to adopt, either within their own eco-system or as “over the top” consumer software.
Consideration of the digital experience is already a differentiator for consumers. Coupled with the expectation of personalisation and integration/connectivity options to be standard — carmakers, mobility providers, off-highway and plant equipment manufacturers have never needed to adapt so fast. It’s my belief that the Android platform and tooling offers a credible solution to that problem. And Conjure is here to partner with those organisations that want to exploit this potential.
In the coming years, I’m also expecting to see AOSP become more commonplace within other embedded systems and IoT devices. An ecosystem of interconnected products sharing common components, libraries, design systems and architectures — not to mention the development community; is a convincing reason for companies to strongly considering investing in Android as a platform. This isn’t new, but consistently, over the last few years, Android has become so much more than just an operating system for mobile devices.
Concept Aura
If you follow our Insight blog, you may have seen our press release last year detailing our involvement in a consortium of UK businesses developing a concept electric vehicle codenamed Aura. Over the last few months we have been developing the complete digital system architecture and multi-screen HMI, completely based on Android Automotive OS. As well as being a skilful example of our work across HMI design, software development and cloud connectivity and data services, we are using this software and hardware platform to help our clients develop and demonstrate their next-generation automotive technology and services.
Over a series of upcoming articles, we plan to discuss and demonstrate more of our processes and innovative work that has gone into the Aura project. If you have a hardware or software system that would benefit from being integrated into a fully functional concept vehicle, please do get in touch.
We can’t wait to show you some of the great stuff the team has been working on, so do subscribe to our Medium Publication to be kept in the loop.
What we offer
Our bread and butter is building great digital products and connected digital experiences. So whether that’s specifically on the Android Automotive platform, or for a completely different digital touchpoint or channel — our approach and services allow Conjure to be a comprehensive end-to-end digital partner for our clients.
Our services cover the three key pillars of digital product development:
- Digital product and service discovery and strategy
Encompassing market, user and competitor research, technical evaluation, product strategy and execution. How does your digital solution fit within the bigger picture of your business and products? What does a now, next and later roadmap look like and what size investment and team does that vision require to make a reality? These are just a sample of the types of questions we explore as part of our Discovery and Strategy function. - Customer-centric user experience, interface and interaction design
Utilising atomic design systems, we build adaptable and reusable design components that can be utilised across multiple digital channels and systems — helping our clients to get the best value out of design as well as innovate and iterate products faster. - Bespoke software development
Our engineering teams include native Android, iOS and web front and back end (APIs/cloud services) development. We’re used to working on multi-platform systems with many complex integrations.
If you would like to know more about how Android Automotive OS or how AOSP could be leveraged for your product or service, you have a project in mind, or just want to talk about the art of the possible — please get in touch and we look forward to chatting with you.
We’re also growing the team at Conjure. If you come from a product, design or development background and are interested in working at the leading edge of digital innovation then we’d love to hear from you. Get in touch or take a look at our current positions.
