Mercedes me redesign

Collage of the redesigned Mercedes me app: home screen with a 2018 E 300 Sedan, remote controls, the finance tab and the Bluetooth onboarding sheet — The redesigned app. Home, remote controls, finance, onboarding. · Source: screens by Roy Wu, design lead

Context & problem

Mercedes me is the app a Mercedes-Benz USA owner opens to lock the car, start it, check its status, keep up with service and pay for it. It did all of that, and owners still didn’t like it.

Press photo of the original Mercedes me app login screen on a Samsung phone — Where it started. The original Mercedes me app's login screen, from the launch-era press kit. · Source: Mercedes-Benz press image

The feedback the client had collected said that neither the functions nor the look matched the quality of the car. The team had wanted to fix this for a long time. They finally opened a pitch to outside studios, and er studio won it. I led product, with Roy Wu as design lead and an engineering team, eight of us in total, across iOS, Android and the web. The scope covered the owner app and the Mercedes-Benz Financial Services (MBFS) payment flows.

The business goals were four: retention, self-service rate, lower customer-service load and brand perception.

Discovery & insight

The research reached 50 owners, 12 of them in moderated one-hour interviews, and 400 survey responses, plus industry data on owner apps and a teardown of the competition. Owners ranked remote control (locks, start, windows) first most often, then predictive maintenance (tire pressure, service).

Bar chart: Remote Control ranked number one by 25% and in the top two by 45%; Predictive Maintenance 18% and 36% — What owners ranked first. Remote control, then predictive maintenance. · Source: research summary slide, Roy Wu

The interviews explained why. Most participants scrolled through menus to find maintenance status. Real-time security alerts and vehicle health were among the things they rated highest. Asked whether they checked status daily, the usual answer was to make sure the car was locked and safe.

Two cards of interview takeaways: information friction, security focus, and the daily 'peace of mind' check — Interview takeaways. Information friction, security first, and the daily check. · Source: research summary slide, Roy Wu

That became the insight Roy and I built everything on: owners want peace of mind and control over simple utility. The app should match the quality of the car, and it should answer “is it okay” before it offers anything else.

HypothesisBy changing a menu-driven, utility-first home to a status-first home that surfaces each owner's next best action for Mercedes-Benz USA owners, we expect weekly active use and retention to move, because owners told us they open the app for peace of mind and control, and the current app made them dig for both.

Strategy & bets

We defined the metrics before the screens: onboarding completion, sign-up success, crash rate, retention, growth and click-through. Retention and weekly active use are the two reported here.

The bet we didn’t take: a more neutral, “Apple-like” interface. We considered it and dropped it to keep the Mercedes identity. Some of the home explorations are below.

Grid of home-screen explorations with different color treatments for the fuel and battery bars — scroll ↕Home explorations. Same structure, different accent systems, before the brand palette was chosen. · Source: Roy Wu

Solution

The redesign kept the architecture owners already knew, the five tabs and the three remote actions, and rebuilt what sat on top of it: hierarchy, personalization and onboarding.

Mercedes me app home screen (After) — Home, 2018 app vs the redesign. Same bones; the new home adds the owner's greeting, fuel and charge, and puts monitoring, financing and concierge in a clear order.

Mercedes me app home screen (Before) — Home, 2018 app vs the redesign. Same bones; the new home adds the owner's greeting, fuel and charge, and puts monitoring, financing and concierge in a clear order.

Five screens of the 2018 Mercedes me app: Inspire, Send2Benz, Home, My Vehicles, Remote Start — The 2018 app, for reference: Inspire, Send2Benz, home, My Vehicles, Remote Start. · Source: Mercedes-Benz USA dealer image, 2018 (low resolution)

Before: the 2018 Mercedes-Benz USA app, from a public dealer image (low resolution). After: screens by Roy Wu. Drag to compare.

Three levers, applied to every screen.

Personalize. The home is built from the owner’s own vehicle and financing status. The next best action comes from the car’s condition, insurance, leasing and service, so the first thing on screen is the thing that needs doing.

Hierarchy. Status, payments and service come first. Secondary features and brand content sit below, consistently organized, instead of competing for the top of the screen.

Gamify. Lightweight progress and milestone feedback that motivates owners to complete key tasks (setup, maintenance, payments) without feeling gimmicky.

Hand-drawn wireframes of the home screen, the mbrace activation screen, the service list and the finance amount-due screen — Wireframes. Status and the three remote actions at the top, then the next best action, then everything else. · Source: Roy Wu

Home screen: greeting, the owner's E 300, fuel and charge bars, Remote Start, Lock & Unlock, Horn & Light, then Vehicle Monitoring, Financial Services and Concierge — The shipped screens. Home, vehicle status and service, finance, inspire. · Source: Roy Wu

Vehicle screen: remote actions, mileage, service due in 45 days, tire pressure diagram — The shipped screens. Home, vehicle status and service, finance, inspire. · Source: Roy Wu

Onboarding sheet explaining how to enable Bluetooth and authorize the app on the in-vehicle display — Onboarding. Bluetooth pairing and in-car authorization, explained on one sheet. · Source: Roy Wu

One icon system across the app, so the same action looks the same on every platform. · Source: Roy Wu

Before and after of the Mercedes me web experience: a long list of partner content on the left, an editorial layout on the right — scroll ↕Web, before and after. The same content, with a hierarchy. · Source: Roy Wu

Tablet layout of the home screen — The same home on a wider screen. · Source: Roy Wu

Execution

I owned the PRD, the prioritization, the negotiation with the client, QA and the release. Roy owned the design system and every screen. Engineering built it for iOS, Android and the web.

The hardest part wasn’t a feature. It was the number of rounds a brand with this bar demands on small details, and learning to treat that as the job rather than friction. We shipped in stages: about 1% of owners, then 5%, then everyone.

Validation & results

700K

weekly active users

3–4 months after full rollout

+45%

retention

3–4 months after full rollout

1% → 5% → 100%

staged rollout

platforms shipped

iOS, Android, web, plus MBFS payments

The numbers above were read three to four months after the full rollout. The staged release went to about 1% of owners, then 5%, then everyone.

Reflection

I didn’t own a car. For most of this project I had to put myself in the seat of someone who does, and understand the client’s customers before I could make calls for them. The second lesson was the brand: its tone and its strict standards are to be respected, not worked around. And if I did it again, the communication, documentation and deliverables would be nailed down at planning.