We partnered with Porsche Canada to deliver a premium app experience that reimagined customer service journeys across dealerships. |
Overview
Porsche Canada approached Element Studios with a critical challenge: integrate a third-party software platform, ACE Marketplace, into their customer app while maintaining a seamless, premium user experience. The goal was to ensure that features like service booking, real-time service tracking, shuttle scheduling, and billing felt like a native part of the Porsche ecosystem — not a bolted-on third-party service.
Beyond integration, we were tasked with reimagining the customer journey in a way that matched Porsche’s luxury brand expectations, despite having no direct access to global branding assets. The experience needed to strengthen Porsche’s reputation for excellence, drive in-app engagement, and improve dealership service satisfaction scores across Canada.
Project Goals
Seamlessly integrate ACE Marketplace into the Porsche Canada mobile app without disrupting the brand experience.
Increase customer app engagement from below 10% to a minimum of 25% within 60 days post-launch.
Improve dealership service satisfaction indexes by 10–15% across participating stores.
Support in-app upselling by enhancing the app dashboard’s visibility and usability.
Maintain strict alignment with Porsche’s global brand guidelines despite asset limitations.
As the lead product design partner, Element Studios was responsible for:
Conducting discovery and research across Porsche, ACE Marketplace, and dealership stakeholders.
Designing a robust UI/UX system that preserved Porsche’s luxury brand standards.
Creating rapid prototypes to facilitate stakeholder feedback and refinement.
Collaborating with cross-functional teams to ensure seamless technical integration
The Process
Discovery & Research
Understanding the Scope
We began by leading a series of discovery workshops with the Porsche Canada executive team and ACE Marketplace’s software engineers. Together, we mapped out technical requirements, KPIs, and business objectives.
Researching the Current Experience
To understand user needs, we interviewed ACE Marketplace staff and surveyed dealership managers and leadership teams. We also conducted surveys with highly engaged dealership customers to get firsthand insights into the service experience and app usage.
Key Findings
Redundant steps in ACE’s user flow created friction that could be streamlined by leveraging Porsche’s existing app functionality.
Dealership managers lacked tools to effectively manage their loaner fleets, requiring us to design new tracking solutions.
Customers were largely unaware of existing app features, highlighting the need for a redesigned dashboard to make critical services more visible and accessible.
Feature Design & Integration
Building the Design System
Given the lack of direct access to Porsche’s global branding assets, we meticulously rebuilt the visual system from scratch, matching global brand standards exactly. We then created a comprehensive design library to ensure consistent visual and UX quality.
Native Experience Strategy
To make the third-party integration feel native, we reimagined the ACE Marketplace user flows, ensuring they fit naturally into the Porsche app’s established navigation patterns and visual language.
Rapid Prototyping
Using Adobe XD, we developed high-fidelity prototypes early and iterated rapidly based on stakeholder and dealership feedback. This allowed for quick validation and refinement cycles.
Dashboard Redesign
Recognizing that customers were unaware of key app features, we redesigned the dashboard to prioritize visibility for service bookings, loaner management, and other essential tools.
Feature Design & Integration
Cross-Functional Alignment
We maintained momentum through bi-weekly executive meetings with Porsche, weekly syncs with ACE’s development team, and daily standups internally at Element Studios.
Technical Constraints
Unexpected technical requirements led us to design a supplemental web application for dealerships, enabling them to better manage service loaner rotation, resale tracking, and customer messaging.
Brand Asset Limitations: Without direct access to Porsche's global design library, we rebuilt all brand assets from scratch, ensuring a flawless match
User Flow Conflicts: Merged two distinct user flows into a single seamless journey by collaborating directly with ACE engineers to update backend APIs.
Low Customer Awareness: Redesigned the app dashboard to surface critical features, dramatically improving feature discovery and engagement.
The integration of ACE Marketplace into Porsche Canada’s mobile app was a major success:
App engagement grew to over 35% within 30 days post-launch, a significant leap from the original 10%.
Service satisfaction scores across participating dealerships rose from 45% to 68%, exceeding the target goal.
In-app store revenue increased by 20%, a direct result of higher app engagement.
Customer feedback was overwhelmingly positive, particularly around the ease of booking service appointments and receiving loaner vehicles.
Porsche Canada’s success story influenced Porsche Global to implement similar experiences in markets like the USA, Germany, and France.
Outcome
This project deepened our understanding of the intricate relationships between a luxury automaker’s regional offices, dealership networks, and end customers. It also reinforced the importance of designing with the brand’s full ecosystem in mind — not just the end user.
We refined our rapid prototyping methods and further strengthened our branding capabilities, enabling us to deliver a seamless, premium experience under challenging conditions.
Biggest Win:
Successfully integrating a third-party service into a luxury brand app without compromising user experience or brand identity — and setting a new standard adopted globally.
Brand Asset Limitations: Without direct access to Porsche's global design library, we rebuilt all brand assets from scratch, ensuring a flawless match
User Flow Conflicts: Merged two distinct user flows into a single seamless journey by collaborating directly with ACE engineers to update backend APIs.
Low Customer Awareness: Redesigned the app dashboard to surface critical features, dramatically improving feature discovery and engagement.