Reimagining the car showroom experience with a phygital app
WHAT WE SHIPPED
A POC tablet app for car showroom.
This is part of the ecosystem of solutions I built at TVS Digital. Read more about the produt building case study here.
My Role
I was the Lead Designer (and researcher) on the project.
Context
The digital innovation arm of the motorcycle manufacturer, TVS Motor, wanted to create a B2B2C product to shake up the automobile retail space.
From this base, we conceptualised 6 individual products across the 5 main points of the car buying journey.
This case study only shows the showroom part of the suite of apps we created, and focuses on my design approach.
Concept
The in-person experience of a car is an important part of the vehicle buying process, especially for premium vehicles.
However, product experience and discovery is limited and can be compromised due to dealer resources.
Could we use tech to improve te car showroom experience for car buyers?
Understanding the Showroom
To better design for this part of the car buying experience, we needed to first understand how this touchpoint served users.
Based on secondary research and interviews with buyers, salespeople, and dealers, we identified two main ways the Showroom (or Test Ride) experience served buyers: for product exploration, and for final confirmation before purchase.
As there was more opportunity with the first kind of user, we decided to focus on their needs of product exploration and learning.
Designing for Car buyers and Salespeople
Although we initially planned for an experience centred around the car-buyer, we quickly realised we needed the buy-in of car salespeople in the showroom in order to convince dealers (their employers) to adopt the solution.
Thus, it was important to make the product work for both kinds of users, even if they had competing interests.
In the end we settled on a software that could not only be used as a portable guide for potential buyers to explore their cars, but also as a learning guide or sales engagement tool for salespeople as they showed customers cars in the showroom.
Exploring Possibilities
To design for a new experience in the showroom, we conducted various ideation activites like group brainstorming, bodystorming and onsite prototyping.
The tablet quickly emerged as the format of choice as as its portability suited the fluidity of a car viewing experience, it provided enough screen space to be seen from an arm's length, and it was at affordable price point for car dealers.
Building around Phyigital Explorations
Fundamental to the interaction design was encouraging car buyers to make full use of the car in front of them, while taking advantage of what a digital medium could offer.
With this direction, we tried several approaches, such as supporting feature discovery through digital and physical means, and enabling people to see how different car parts would behave under different scenarios.
These ideas accumulated in a single tablet app that contained 'playlists' of guided feature exploration shorts. Car buyers could effectively use this one solution to self-direct their showroom experience with the car in front of them. Conversely, salespeople could use this solution as a sales companion and better discern what their customers were interested in.
We also experimented with location-based experiences. This one simulates the scenarios of the instrument cluster as if the car was on the road. If the car was actually on the road, drivers would be too distracted to notice this.
Expanding from Experiential to the Practical for a Seamless Experience
Through our on-site visits, we also realised that the showroom experience flowed seamlessly between the experiential experience and price discussions.
To better support salepeople in creating a seamless experience for customers, we incorporated features for the deal/proposal negotiation process into the showroom app, with the goal of producing artefacts (personalised links, print-outs of car pacakge) for car buyers to bring home.
This was a completely different experience to design as it is a lot more structured and business process driven.
In this part of the journey, the UI here has been switched to light, emphasising the tenet of transparency, which was crucial to the experience of car buyers.
Outcome
Although the prototype was well-received by car buyers we tested with, and garnered early support from the customer we worked with, ultimately product priorities changed, and it was too difficult to make it commercially viable with our team's limited resources.
Though we had to abandon our initial product idea, shipping it taught me that you cannot build a product solely based on improving customer experience.
The most important thing is to have buy-in from businesses (and operations staff) to carry out the change in their business practices. This makes working with the right visionary partners crucial in creating successful transformative products.
