Localising a luxury EV brand’s in-car entertainment screens for a successful launch in Saudi Arabia.
For Western companies looking to make a splash in emerging regions like the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), itʼs essential that more than just your words translate well. From product features to digital design, the process of localising your offering is hugely important for boosting your chances of success.
Hereʼs how we helped a luxury electric car brand do just that.
We met Lucid Motors when they were looking to validate the Arabic version of their in-car entertainment screens for cultural accuracy and sensitivity for the Saudi Arabian market – and who better than locals to give them the answers they needed? The team at Lucid were aer feedback from their prospective customers so they could maximise their launch impact.
Sounds simple enough, right? Test your entertainment system with Arabic users and youʼre done.
But generic Arabic usability testing doesnʼt go very far when you consider that there are over 25 dialects across the Arabic-speaking world. They were missing the insights and resources to fully localise their content and create the best possible experience for their customers.
And thatʼs where we came in.
It was a pretty perfect match – seamless driving experiences are a cornerstone of the Lucid brand, and creating smooth experiences for users is kind of our thing! But anyway, back to it...
Lucid Motors wanted a partner with targeted Arabic expertise and access to country-specific locals. We are local UX specialists with decades of experience helping businesses connect with audiences in Saudi Arabia.
They needed two things from us – first, to truly understand who theyʼre trying to reach and second, adapt their entertainment screens to those usersʼ specific needs to help them supercharge their offering in the market.
With no prior experience in the MENA region, getting in the room with locals who could provide the insights was a huge challenge – but not when you have a partner like us.
This project was all about getting into the minds of the Saudi audience and testing the Lucid in-car entertainment screen usability. So, we built a tailored approach led by the two main aims Lucid Motors had.
It was vital for Lucid Motors to really grasp the people and culture in Saudi Arabia to help them create a fully-localised, user-friendly product.
We started the project by carrying out in-depth user interviews with 10 local Saudis, offering our signature Arabic and English language options.
And rather than picking generic users from limited testing pools, our extensive panel of testers across the region enabled us to select particular users from specific demographics that aligned perfectly with Lucid Motorsʼ target market. In this case, for a luxury car manufacturer, we chose test subjects who would have the disposable income needed to purchase a high-end electric vehicle.
This looked like a panel of seven male and three female testers living in Riyadh, whose insights shaped user personas, which empowered the Lucid team to find out the following about their users:
They also wanted to discover any user issues and frustrations specific to the Saudi market and adapt to them. To do that, we live-tested the vehicle dashboardʼs usability to get a deeper understanding of how easy it is for testers to use the carʼs entertainment screens. And, of course, to get to those all-important pain points.
“Thank you so much for sharing such an insightful report and engaging our team in thoughtful conversations. It has been very impactful so far, and we are in action to implement learning from the study"
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We deployed our team of UX experts into the field, testing the car's interface by observing exactly how users interacted with the dashboard while driving, and more specifically, looking to uncover these insights:
We identified that certain features of the car that worked well in the US market actually posed a threat to Saudi drivers. Why? Because a lot of drivers in Riyadh donʼt tend to adhere to inside lanes, our invaluable research showed that the Lane Departure Protections feature was inconvenient, and potentially dangerous – just one of the many tweaks the Lucid team were able to make to the vehicle's dashboard.
Their newly localised entertainment screens gave them the insights they needed to launch a culturally-sound, fully-optimised product. Lucid Motors are now a fast-growing presence in the EV market in Saudi Arabia.
Look out, youʼll probably be able to spot a few on the road soon!
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