Connected Experience
Connect EV is a smart remote control and status report application for Nissan Leaf - the Electric Vehicle series equipped with smart sensors all over it. Its main purpose is to keep users connected with their car whenever they want.
Painting realistic requirements
First, we had to analyse what we had in our hands. Then straight forward to stitching together what we had in our hands and creating a huge list of uncertainties. It was clear why users didn’t fancy the app for the first place. Many of the features just showed technical details that the daily user didn’t need at all. As we didn’t either. So we had to understand what data represented what in the first place so kept a long-running dialogue with the developers.
Synthesizing the case
User interviews granted us great insight into the actual needs of users. The current application was way over the needs. That’s why users couldn’t use it. It was both too technical hard to use. So we’ve started to dissect the application features one by one and by the help of the technology department, we’ve started to stitch together the features. Luckily most of our ideas were feasible to implement on to.
Refactoring the technology
Meanwhile, we kept in touch with a select of users to understand their actual needs and expecting to see from the app. This was our invisible ‘filter’ to remove unnecessary features from the app. Of course with the dialogues moving forward, we discovered lots of other needs. And the majority of those could be translated using the previous ‘technical’ features. Such as ‘Driving Report’ and gamify the safe driving score (which was a problem in the region)
