Nissan Ariya

In July 2020 Nissan revealed the brand’s first all-electric crossover SUV, the ARIYA. The car launch coincided with a global rebrand, and intended to connect the brand’s heritage with the digital world. The challenge was launching the new EV vehicle with an interactive digital experience that managed to tell the story of the car in a seamless narrative.

The result is a roadmap for a digital product for the car: Virtual Car - where users have a digital copy of their car to interact with, from pre-purchase, to buying and onboarding, to post-purchase. The first version of Virtual Car was launched for the product reveal at the start of 2020.

Keywords: interactive design experience, brand launch

1. Product definition workshop

To define what the core experience of Virtual Car should be, I led a week-long design Sprint that started with a product definition workshop. Attendees were members of C-level including the CDO of Nissan, as well as representatives from technology, business, product and marketing.

Activities ranged from bringing a homework example of inspiring immersive digital experiences to discuss, setting up golden rules for our experience, and workshopping around what key messages and takeaways for the user should be. Additionally, we collaborated to build a key success metric framework and high-level roadmap.

2. Defining the narrative

The first product focus for Virtual Car was to create an experience for the user to get acquainted with the new EV. The initial storytelling focused around taking a ‘virtual drive’ with Ariya, showcasing its key features. Using user and context research, as well as inputs from the sprint, I pushed the conceptual narrative to be different.

Rather than focusing on features, the experience focus shifted to be more benefit led: users need to understand how the car fits in to their life. Help the user understand current pain points, and how this car alleviates your pain. A focus on positive ‘moments’ in the car that you encounter in a day in your life with Ariya. This way, the car feels familiar when you physically step into it for the first time.

3. Sketching and storyboarding

Once we collectively agreed on the global narrative, we ran 2 sprints of defining the key moments, and started sketching out the storyline for this newfound narrative. Storyboards were used to define intuitive interactions to tell the story of the car. Several rounds of iteration with feedback from key stakeholders helped refine the final storyline.

4. Interactive prototyping

The entire concept went through different fidelity prototypes after the sketches. Hand-drawn sketches were translated into mid-fidelity digital sketches for Marvel click-prototype to get a feel for the entire experience. Additionally, I prototyped certain micro-interactions using Principle to handover to a developer team in the Nordics, who made it come to life using WebGL and three.js.

5. Art direction

At its heart, the experience repesents a "new dawn and new era" due to the rebrand and the launch of a new EV, and this became the organizing idea for the team’s thinking going forward.

Dawn and imminent light are weaved throughout the art direction we established for the experience. UI elements intentionally feel open – giving space to the essential parts of the experience.  Ariya takes away the stresses of the driver and helps them through the day-to-day of their lives. All motion principles are derived from the car itself.

6. User testing

Rapid testing using the Marvel prototype and validation was the key to success for this product.  With a short timeline, we tested numerous prototypes at different fidelities in the US, Japan and Europe. Iteration based on the research enabled us to create a highly functional product that not only worked well but resonated emotionally with customers the world over.  

6. Launch

The first version of Virtual Car was launched in March 2020 as a part of Nissan’s fully virtual Minato experience. Due to COVID, timelines sped up and the full set of features are due to be released over its planned roadmap.

Read article in Design Week here.

Full team

Jude Gay – Associate Creative Director 
Malin Persson – Art Direction
Sindhuja Shyam – Experience Design Lead
Rebecca Werres – Visual Design Lead
Sandeep Singh Bisran – Senior UX Designer
Carla De Maria - Senior UX Designer
Daniele Signoriello – Senior Visual Designer
Lawrence Pearson – 3D Designer
Vicky Yang – Motion Designer

Other details

Agency – Publicis Sapient
Client – Nissan
Year – 2020