Mobile app

Designing an iPhone, iPad, and Android app to educate BMW fans more about e-mobility, promote the new BMW i electric vehicles, and generate customer leads.

My role

I created a detailed app concept, wire-framing the interface, and designing the user flow and interactions.

Mobile app as a medium

Using a native mobile app as a medium for marketing communication allowed us to create features otherwise unfeasible.

Two examples were using the device’s gyroscope to explore a car’s interior and tracking the location (a la Runkeeper) to show how suitable one’s driving would be with an electric vehicle.

While an app enabled some of these nice interactive features,the content was not created to sustain interest beyond 1 or 2 visits and would have benefited more from a medium with less barriers to entry, e.g. a web landing page.

Designing for different devices

Due to time and cost, it was decided to design and build an iPhone app, then port that over to an Android version. What became clear to me is that while this produced a minimum viable product on Android, it felt like an iPhone app.

An example of this was the navigation UI and hierarchy of screens; the user flow that worked well on the iPhone became confused with the Android ‘Back’ button and ‘Back Stack’. In future, I would prefer to design a different version for each platform so each user group has a native experience.

Key learnings

For me, the main takeaway from this project is the importance of selecting the right medium for the content. The experience a user has when using an app should be compelling enough to justify downloading it and using it multiple times.

With this app that was not the case, which for me reinforced the need for a strong product strategy that takes these barriers to entry into consideration.