ReachNow: Mobility services from the BMW Group
Challenge
Advancements in technology and the sharing economy are drastically reshaping the way people will use transportation – today, and in the future. As a true pioneer in urban mobility, ReachNow, the mobility services division of the BMW Group, is at the forefront of this trend. ReachNow is building a mobility experience for Members that enables them to access multiple services – from car sharing to ride hailing to multi-day rental options – with one membership and a single application. Now that the company had tested many of these services across multiple applications, they were ready to integrate them into one intuitive, approachable customer experience for the company’s 100,000+ members. ReachNow selected Smashing as their innovation partner to re-architect and re-design the iOS and Android mobile applications. The unification of these services would position ReachNow as the only company to operate multiple services within one mobile experience and allow them to deliver on their vision of shaping the future of urban mobility.
Solution
With ReachNow’s Member experience being the driving force of the reimagined mobile application, Smashing’s team of strategists, UX, visual designers, and engineers began with a human-centered design approach. They conducted more than 50 interviews with ReachNow Members, audited Member service calls, interviewed Member service reps, and analyzed extensive Member reviews. This led to the development of eight distinct personas, each with unique use-cases for how they would use ReachNow’s mobility services to navigate their world. These personas enabled stakeholders to prioritize and align on target Member needs and features that defined the test and pilot releases. Once initial prototypes were in place, the team conducted unmoderated virtual testing and in-person, moderated testing via click-through prototypes. This generated weekly user insights that could be implemented directly into the design and development sprints. The visual design and user experience translated into a well-defined design language that enables ReachNow to extend the application into future mobility offerings. Due to the complexity of creating a mobility experience of this scope, Smashing’s interdisciplinary teams worked side-by-side with ReachNow’s team of developers onsite at Smashing. This co-location effort brought two teams of developers, one iOS, one Android, into a unified build environment, which produced a scalable and extendable digital experience that went from the mobile application to the head unit of the cars and incorporated complex GPS, authentication, and anti-fraud components. With a dedicated ReachNow car accessible throughout the duration of the development cycle, the team was able to conduct frequent, on-demand tests with the real system, allowing for rapid iterations of the user experience, feature testing, and analytics integration between the physical and digital experiences. The team then launched an Alpha test to prove data flows from back-end to front-end, while two complex Beta tests validated front-end to back-end to vehicle and back flows.
Results
With a dedicated ReachNow car accessible throughout the duration of the development cycle, the team was able to conduct frequent, on-demand tests with the real system, allowing for rapid iterations of the user experience, feature testing, and analytics integration between the physical and digital experiences. The team then launched an Alpha test to prove data flows from back-end to front-end, while two complex Beta tests validated front-end to back-end to vehicle and back flows.
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