After brainstorming with the innovation team at Mercury, we pared down our initial list of ideas to create a lean pilot that could easily be tested before it needed to be scaled up. We used the quantitative data Mercury had gathered on the EV market, along with our own product and market research, to gain a deeper understanding of the context around this venture.

We set out to design and produce a prototype within four weeks that would help Mercury test some of the ideas we had refined together. A feature workshop helped us identify the necessary features across three categories: “must-have”, “performance” and “delight”. We realised we would need to provide users with a simple digital journey that could give them access to an EV with a few clicks.

Creating a subscription platform was going to require a strong business plan. Customers would need to understand and trust the concept of signing up to a subscription for an EV. We designed a website with three key areas: a landing page with essential information on the subscription and what it entails; a visually driven showcase with 3D real-life renders of each vehicle; and a simple and easy sign-up and payment process.

Using Stripe in combination with our custom Sauce backend allowed us to create a dashboard that could generate new vehicles and keep a record of all the subscriptions, customers and vehicles that made up the Mercury Drive platform. The dashboard gave the Mercury Drive team a core tool to handle all aspects of their business, from launch to full-market scale.