Designing a carsharing service that can play a truly relevant role in people’s lives

Brand experience agency edenspiekermann_ and Volkswagen’s Service Innovation Team explored what it takes to define a service that would play a relevant role in people’s lives.

“We started with: Who are the people that use carsharing? How can we expand the service to exceed their expectations? How do people find, explore and adopt this new service? How can we design a service that is easy, enjoyable, useful and valuable? We mapped out and designed the customer journey along the different touchpoints of a carsharing service.

We explored every touchpoint: from the key that opens the door, to the iPhone App to find a car on the street, to the signs that indicate a reserved parking spot. We developed prototypical solutions and tested them with real users in real environments. Also, in-depth interviews brought insights into what works and what does not. We burned through thousands of post-its to record all aspects of what we learned in our tests. It was a reality check. At Edenspiekermann service design goes way beyond research. We win insights by creating refined prototypes that provide a sophisticated experience to users.”

The current commercial version of Volkswagen’s carsharing service is „Quicar“, available in Hannover.