Mercedes-Maybach stands for ultimate luxury in its most modern form. Luxury has always been a core attribute of the Mercedes-Benz brand. With the recent adjustment of the overall brand strategy and its product portfolio, luxury is emphasized on even more, with the central goal of building the world’s most desirable cars.

The world‘s first Brand Experience Center for the luxury brand Mercedes-Maybach opened its doors in Shanghai, the Maybach Atelier - and since then has made it possible to experience the multiple facets of the brand in unique ways.

The Maybach Atelier in Shanghai implies a reference to an artistic place where customers and consultants select the most suitable options to create a unique composition from a wide range of choices. An environment that is tailor-made for a configurator of the highest visualization quality as well as interactive and innovative user experience design.

The Maybach Atelier in Shanghai implies a reference to an artistic place where customers and consultants select the most suitable options to create a unique composition from a wide range of choices. An environment that is tailor-made for a configurator of the highest visualization quality as well as interactive and innovative user experience design.

Our idea was to create a new form of retail car configurator that embraces the concept of luxury “manufaktur” and puts the focus on the build-to-order strategy of Mercedes-Maybach in China to inspire the customer’s creativity and desire for the brand. The hyper-realistic 3D depiction shall use technology that is embedded discreetly in the room without dominating the environment, leaving the stage for visualization and human interaction and still offer the customers a one of a kind mulit-sensory experience.

The goal was very clear: We wanted to develop nothing less than "The Maybach of 3D Visualizers".

The team dealt intensively with the Maybach brand philosophy and model range. Understanding the cars, their build-ups as well as each single equipment part was a pre-requisite to conduct interviews with all stakeholders including customers, prospects and sales consultants. Determining motivations, desire and behavioral patterns when it comes to buying a luxury vehicle like the Mercedes-Maybach was essential to draft the UX design. The team documented the processes in the user journeys of these personas, bringing insights into behavior at the touchpoints, similarities, and differences. The user journey maps formed the basis for the design principles of the user experience, especially for the iPad app and studio screen.

The result now available with the Maybach Atelier Visualizer reflects the group‘s claim to the top position in the market. The entry into the configurator via living environments and the emotional-tactile user experience suits the target group of luxury and tech-savvy customers.

The Maybach 3D Visualizer was developed from April 14th to October 21st, 2022.

Displayed on a vertical 83-inch screen in the Maybach Atelier, it literally draws the users inside the luxurious world. Uniting top-notch 3D quality with other physical and digital core technologies, such as WeChat-Miniprogram and RFID, it extends the customer interaction beyond the showroom with shareable and personalized content. While it is designed to be a powerful tool for the sales consultant to introduce all of the cars highlights, for the customers it is a joyride through their future car.

The consultant steers the individual steps with an iPad and can provide each customer an individualized tour around the car, its equipment and configuration choices. In this way, the consultant can build his own narrative via contextual, quick and easy navigation of angles and features, and still keep the full attention to the customer and conversation.

The Maybach Atelier 3D Visualizer also turns digital configuration into a haptic experience for the customer: Physical miniature objects were 3D-printed or created using original materials to provide the customer the haptic feeling of the individual equipment. If the customers selects one of the objects during the consultation, their choice is transmitted to the Visualizer via RFID, and the vehicle is displayed in real-time 3D with the desired equipment variant on the large screen.

After completing the configuration of the car, the customers can scan QR code on the screen that leads them to a configuration summary with images and videos of their customized Maybach. The real-time rendered assets are immediately available in the mini-program to download or to share directly online.

With a clear, functional user journey that supports customers and consultants in all process steps the Maybach 3D visualizer is the connecting piece between physical and digital retail experience.

Since the opening of the Maybach Atelier in Shanghai, the Maybach Atelier 3D Visualizer immediately became the number one tool for the Atelier consultants to present car highlights and configuration choices of the S-Class and GLS. With it, they are able to cater to the desires of their highly individual luxury customers.

The modular build-up of the application is the basis for quick and easy adaptations for additional car models, different markets, and even individual dealerships. The integration into the Mercedes-Benz eco-systems via APIs and code strings simplifies the internal ordering process as well as delivers valuable metrics for the sales management.

The future is three dimensional and digital. However, a key element is also to bring digital elements into the physical world via a refined user journey. Following this mantra, the Maybach 3D visualizer instantly became a benchmark in the configurator industry in terms of quality, usability and implementation.