2010
open-source brand, film, documentary, actiovation & social platform
fiat
Fiat Mio is the first ever
crowdsourced car.
my role
Original Concept, Art Direction, film, UX and Design Director
about
Fiat Mio is an innovative and collaborative project. In August 2009 Fiat invited people to share ideias about the car of the future. The company had promised to take these ideas off the page, building a concept car known as Fiat Mio. The result became the world's first crowdsourcing car and one of the main highlights of the Internacional Automobile Trade Show in São Paulo, 2010.
press
"Fiat releases details of first ever crowdsourced car - The company has posted some fascinating making-of videos giving people an access-all areas pass to the car making process."
"At Fiat in Brazil, Vehicle Design Is No Longer By Fiat."
press
"Fiat Brazil Suggests The First Co-Created Car: Fiat Mio will be the first concept vehicle created under Creative Commons licensing."
"6 Great Products Designed By The Internet"
awards
Effie Awards, Gold, Durable Goods
El Ojo Iberoamerica, Gold, Branded Content
El Ojo Iberoamerica, Silver, PR
El Ojo Iberoamerica, Bronze, El Tercer
Clio, Shortlist, Integrated Campaign
New York Festival, Shortlist, Digital & Interactive
Wave Festival, Shortlist, Best Website
4A’s Jay Chiat, Silver, Idea for New Product/Content
Festival of Media Latam, Winner, Creativity & Innovation
Festival of Media Latam, Shortlist, Comunication Strategy
Festival of Media Latam, Shortlist, Social Strategy
Festival of Media Latam, Shortlist, Effectiveness Strategy
Contagious Magazine, Winer, Most Contagious Idea
what is about
Bringing crowdsourcing to the automotive industry.
backstage
Fiat has been the leading company in the Brazilian automaker market in the last 8 years. This leadership in the Brazilian market was consequence of a strong belief in innovation. The investment of the company in the Internet was always directed to increase users interaction with the brand.
For the first time in history, a car manufacturer opened its creative process for outside participation. The project had a huge national and international media buzz and large public engagement from all over the world.
The Fiat Mio project flies in the face of conventional car design, which is usually fine-tuned behind closed doors to prevent competitors from stealing ideas. Fiat Mio falls under the Creative Commons License, allowing participants to own their contributions, but for the community to distribute, modify and share their ideas.
01
August
2009
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Collecting ideas — Embracing Openness to create the car of the future.
The project started as an online platform for communication between Fiat and the public. The audience could participate by sending ideas, discussing proposals or voting in polls about what they want for a car in the future. Along the way Fiat published daily reports with updates about every step of the development of the car together with studies and curated content from the automotive universe to help inspire users and promote their participation.
More than 11,000 ideas have been submitted by an active community with more than 17,000 members from more than 120 coutries.
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Every single interaction by the audience with the platform was analyzed and discussed by the design and engineer teams from Fiat, which included all kind of suggestions such as wheels that rotate 90 degrees to allow for easier parallel parking from cameras instead of rear-view mirrors and inter-vehicle communication to avoid collision.
The whole discussion was then organized into 21 new concepts and technologies published under the creative commons license. This was the groundwork for the beginning of the construction of the concept car.
02
February
2010
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Building a concept car — a real-time documentary.
The conversation then focused on the 21 concepts and, in addition to the dally reports, Fiat started posting making-of videos every 2 weeks showing every step of the entire hard-work process of making a car from the scratch.
"The company has posted some fascinating making-of videos giving people an access-all areas pass to the car making process, including one that explores how they decided upon the shape of the car and one that shows the enormous clay modelling machine at work -- an huge robotic device with a five-axis mechanical arm that mills a huge slab of clay into a full size 3D representation of the vehicle.” - Wired
The videos also helped illustrated some of the more complex ideas such as a head up display windshield integrated with the control system of the car.
Our design team worked very close with the Fiat design and ergonomic teams to help them study how a navigation based on augmented reality, infotainment elements and touch screen controls could work in a interface never before imagined for a car (way before Tesla). It was a great challenge to organize and carefully choose the weight of each piece of information, ensuring a simple and intuitive usability for users.
Each aspect of the car was always first presented, discussed and approved by the audience before being executed. Participants could see in real-time their ideas becoming reality.
03
October
2010
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The final result — Presenting Fiat Mio at the Internacional Automobile Trade Show.
After almost 2 years of project, the first crowdsourcing car was finally ready and shining for the International Automobile Trade Show of São Paulo, Brazil.
To welcome all the participants, we prepared a giant panel with a special message for all the Fiat Mio creators and we built a movie theater with capacity for 40 people featuring a short film about the whole process.
In addition we also created multi-touch interactive totens were visitors could check out all the details and technologies collaboratively discussed for the car.
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The international buzz was gigantic. The project inspire articles and books all around the world about the future of the relationship between brands and consumers and how social collaboration is forever changing the way different industries works.
Ultimately Fiat Mio helped Fiat to embrace openness, creating a dynamic new way of building it’s brand through a truly open conversation.
credits
Fabrício Teixeira, André Pinheiro, Fernando Colares, Fabricio Lucio, Steve ePonto, Diogo Valim, Raphael Vasconcellos, Eduardo Battiston, Colmeia.
