Connexion Factory 2012

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I was the Lead Designer & Creative Director of this 5 month staged project. Citroën wanted to create a Facebook application that allowed the user to design and configure their very own C1, the winning (most popular) result was called the C1 Connexion ... the first ever crowd-sourced vehicle ever!

My feeling was that the campaign needed to be colourful, fresh and as far away from an 'automotive-type' site as possible. This was especially important as it was hosted in Facebook and increasing cynicism towards manufacturers using Facebook as a commercial tool; demanded that this was purely a branding exercise. Therefore imagery needed to be overtly fun, young and creative in spirit.

This was an early visual during the concept phase of how I saw the 'fantasy' factory working. My idea was to create a factory type environment that the user navigates via Clic (Citroën robot). Clic asks you for your assistance and guides you through the process of configuring your C1 with the assistance of data-generated messages throughout the application that responds to your choices.

These were some early sketches of a robot character that I designed to navigate the user through the factory as they configure their vehicle.

'Clic' the robot has 989 brothers and sisters all who work for Citroen and one day his he looked around and realised that he was meant for greater things and so broke free and slaved away in secret to create his own perfectly designed car...

... A big undertaking for a singular small robot, he is asking for your help to design that car!

I designed this Flash application for Clic to guide the user through the factory, making their choices of colour, accessories etc. This flash application used paralax to give the illusion of depth and also used Facebook API data to personalise the experience. This is evident both when Clic addresses the user and also the users photos can be seen throughout the app.

This is the last stage of the application where the user has made their choices within the factory. They are no in the showroom for the prototype and Clic engages in a Skype call with his assistants at his secret factory where they are ready to receive the blueprints and put the users design into production.

At this stage the user has a post-to-wall prompt to share their design with other users to help seed the application. The user is alerted that should their design be the most popular configuration that they will be entered into the prize draw to win that specially manufactured car.

The Facebook application was active for a number of weeks where users could be in with a change of winning a C1. Whilst the competition was closed to collate the results the factory was still there for users to interact just for fun.

Meanwhile a new application was launched as the hub for progress and information about peoples efforts with various stages from collating results, through to announcing the winner, inviting designs for the special edition badge, judging those designs and thanking all of the users that got involved with the campaign with a personalised message (again using Facebook API).