AKQA & Nissan Rethink Car Design

Choosing colours and matching rims for a car is no longer enough. As society changes, cars are bought as a reflection – and enabler - of a driver’s lifestyle, and the way future models are designed needs to be revolutionised.

This was Nissan’s thought when it created Nissan IDx, a co-creation strategy that invites a global community of drivers and enthusiasts to enter a dialogue with Nissan and help shape automotive design for a new generation of drivers.

Nissan partnered with AKQA to introduce Nissan IDx at the 2013 Tokyo Motor Show. To bring this concept to life, AKQA coupled groundbreaking technology from Oculus VR [Virtual Reality] with innovative experience design to create an immersive virtual world of co-creation that visitors could literally step into and explore.

On entering the experience via the VR headset, every user was given a chassis of a Nissan IDx concept car to accompany them on their co-creation journey. With it, the viewer travelled through a series of immersive 3D worlds, each requiring the user to make a choice before they could continue. Each choice was designed to find out about each individual user and their needs and desires as a driver: are they a thrill-seeker or a laid-back cruiser? A petrol head or an electric rebel?

The outcome of each choice serves to create a bespoke Nissan IDx concept car that reflects the user’s personality. As well as discovering the benefits of the new Nissan IDx design ethos by building a tailor-made car, the user also contributed to the larger Nissan IDx project by adding their voice to the community.

Below, AKQA executive creative director Nick Turner discusses the challenge they faced bringing the experience to life and people's connections with cars and brands in general are changing.

What was it that Nissan wanted to achieve with the motor show when they approached you?

Nissan briefed AKQA to show the world that they are collaborating with consumers to co-create the next generation of cars. They wanted an interactive experience where the Tokyo Motor Show audience could be part of the co-creation process. At the heart of the brief was Nissan’s brand promise of delivering ‘Innovation that excites’.

Car advertising is, in general, very formulaic; how difficult is it to come up with something truly innovative?

To come up with something truly innovative you have to be ruthless with critiquing and filtering your ideas. You need a very clear brief that everyone in the team understands, and believes in.

You have to understand what the customer really wants and continually ask ourselves the difficult questions, and are very honest in our answers. What is truly original and innovative about this idea? What’s the genuine benefit to the customer? How is this idea going to make them feel? How does this idea contribute to a consumer’s life? Is what we create going to be the best in the world?

The customer has to be at the centre of the idea.

How much has new technology released you from having to contemplate the more standard advertising approaches?

Technology has revolutionised everything. Technology has allowed us to entertain, educate and interact with audiences in completely new ways. We can engage with the audience in more meaningful and more importantly, relevant ways.

The only limitation is our imagination and determination. We have the luxury of being able to ask ‘What if…? Or ‘Imagine if you could…” and then have the skills and know-how to invent, craft and build almost any digital product, service or consumer experience we can dream up.

We always start with an idea and use technology to enable the idea. More-often-than-not we need to use bespoke technology solutions because our ideas need to be world firsts. 

As well as the technology, how important is the user experience as a whole at a trade show stand?

There are two parts to the user-experience of Nissan IDx at the Tokyo Motor show. One was physical, and the other was virtual.

On the physical side, it was important the user was sitting down, as some of the experience is from the perspective of being in a car and being stood up just ‘felt unnatural’. It felt like you were observing rather than participating. Even though we were submerging their visual senses with a virtual world, the user used their physical presence to determine how real they perceived the experience.

We also created a unique virtual user-experience by allowing the user to navigate and make choices with just their eyes. If a user looks at an object or a navigation signpost for three seconds, a choice is made and they move forward through the experience.

This is a completely new way of interacting with a digital experience, which meant we had to approach the user-experience in a completely original way.

Are people’s interactions and associations with products such as cars changing, and if so, why?

Consumers are falling out of love with the idea of a car as a status symbol. They are seeing cars as just another 'device' used for transportation and an extension of their digital selves. With loyalty waning, I believe cars will need to anticipate what consumers need to know before they ask, and automatically sync with customers' digital lives to sustain a competitive advantage.

Automotive brands should look to create in-car products, services and systems that help customers form a bond with the brand experience, which will encourage long-term brand and product loyalty and repeat purchase behaviour.

As people become more used to controlling their environments and the things that live in it, will brands have to adapt to how they create their products and how much access and collaboration there is with consumers?

Good brands have always listened to consumer feedback. The best brands are the ones that actually act on consumer feedback. Successful brands in the future will be the ones that co-create with consumers on products and services they really want.

This is not presenting ideas to focus groups, but by getting consumers involved 365 days of the year in every aspect of product development. Only by understanding the wants and desires of diverse audiences’, will a brand be able to have deeper resonance and a longer lasting relationship with consumers.

What was the process of creating the Rift system for the Tokyo Motor Show?

When working in any new medium it is important to understand its specific requirements, what works well and what is lost, how to emphasise the strong points, focus attention where you need it to be and how to utilise the experience to its full potential. 

We needed to experiment in the VR environment and really ‘design from within’.  Our creative team realised early on that traditional methods of design would be redundant here, and that we needed to start from scratch and work entirely within the VR experience during the design process. With rapid user testing, sand boxing and designing in the virtual world we armed our team with a new set of tools that changed the way we design. 

You can read AKQA's Andy Hood discussing the technological revelations that the Oculus Rift system can deliver if you click here.