Challenges

Technology inside of automobiles is becoming more advanced. Paper manuals can be hard to follow and can lead to customers getting confused or not understanding the brand’s differentiators.

Modern cars have dashboards full of new features and technology. With how quickly companies are innovating their vehicles, new users can have difficulty understanding and utilizing the functionalities. Printed user manuals take time to read and don’t offer the information in context to the dashboard, making it hard to translate written or visual instructions from paper to the physical car. Often, many customers or potential buyers are interested in specific features in the car and will have to flip through an entire manual before getting what they’re looking for.

By using Augmented Reality, Mercedes-Benz wanted to make understanding and using their cars’ advanced features easier for their customers. The automotive industry is also extremely competitive, so offering customers an innovative way to learn about their vehicles through augmented reality customer support could help differentiate them.

Solution

Mercedes-Benz created the Ask Mercedes digital owners manual application. This free mobile app is used as a product companion for the Mercedes-Benz E-Class and S-class sedan and enables customers to explore their car either via a chat bot or through augmented reality. This is done by offering a more contextual user interface that allows the customer to simply point their mobile device to the dashboard’s panels to find out how to use them.

It uses a 3D model based on the car’s dashboard for recognition and overlays information once initialized. No outside markers needed to be added to the Mercedes dashboards.