Selling the first modular phone
Photo: Branch
Project Ara was Google’s skunkworks project to create the world’s first modular smartphone. Specialized, hot-swappable modules meant a generational leap not just in flexibility, but also features and capabilities. The original ask was a site for customers to customize and buy the phone, but we realized the larger, strategic problem was showing the mass market how such a complex product could improve their everyday lives.
Part 1: Customize a complex device—
Problem
Get users to buy a phone because it’s customizable (i.e. complex) while making the process as simple as possible.
Users
Since gadget freaks were already intensely interested in Ara, we expanded our audience ambitions to less technical users with disposable income.
Role
I was one of two lead designers on a team of four. This vision project took roughly a month.
As Ara’s defining quality, delightful customization was crucial. Early attempts with conventional patterns to make things as easy as possible led to relatively linear flows that felt tedious and underwhelming for such an exciting product.
Make it playful—
We observed that when people actually held the device, they couldn’t resist detaching, swapping, and attaching new modules like Legos. We saw that playfulness (and satisfying click) as an important emotional component to Ara that we really wanted to bring online. A tabletop experience with draggable modules would also feel more open and could proceed to checkout within the same page context.
Bring water to the horse—
No matter how delightful configuration would be, we worried that clicking “Customize” to enter the feature would still mostly appeal to fanboys while intimidating our broader mass market target. So we changed the flow so that more users would be exposed to customization earlier before entering the full feature.
We wanted users to get excited about both the unprecedented capabilities and customization while doing nothing more than scrolling. Though the PDP grew, CTAs to customize or buy were always persistent.
Scrolljack through module details / swapping
Part 2: How Ara fits in your life—
For an audience beyond gadget freaks, the real problem was turning Ara from just impressive tech into something that they could see improving their lives.
Early rough sketches—
We began by exploring diverse approaches and benefits: general lifestyle, luxury fashion item, an infinite gallery of possible configurations, the impressive range of module capabilities never before seen in a phone.
Affinity page—
Ara's completely adaptable nature raised concerns that it would be hard for customers to see how the phone was more than just a cool idea and personally identify with the product.
Since Google was already working with other world famous brands to create the modules, leveraging those brands elevated Ara while also focusing on the new unique capabilities of the ecosystem.
To that end, we explored designs for Affinity Pages as an entry point to the site which combined a module showcase, a gallery of starting configurations, and a brand story.
Our final homepage—
The homepage introduced Ara through a series of common lifestyle-based configurations, visually depicted with object-based stories. These would each take you to a PDP as shown in Part 1.