ReachNow
Mobility Ecosystem & App Redesign
Project Summary
ReachNow, the mobility services division of the BMW Group, had built a suite of transportation services for over 100,000 members. Car sharing, ride hailing, and multi-day rentals were spread across separate applications. They partnered with Smashing Ideas to unify these into a single, seamless experience built for their public launch across New York, Seattle, and Portland. The goal was ambitious: create something that had never existed before, a single app where members could choose to drive themselves or be driven, with a connected experience that extended from their phone to the car itself.
The Challenge
ReachNow was solving a problem no one had solved before. Combining a ride-hailing experience with a free-floating car rental in a single app meant designing for two fundamentally different mental models. A member requesting a ride is passive, waiting to be taken somewhere. A member renting a car is active, making decisions about where to go, how long to stay, and how to operate an unfamiliar vehicle. That last point introduced a layer of complexity unique to this product. Unlike Uber or Zipcar, ReachNow members were getting into BMW vehicles with controls and shifters that work differently than most cars. The app had to bridge the physical and digital, guiding members through the car itself, not just the booking experience. At the same time, the existing beta had eroded member trust through bugs and friction. We were designing a new experience for an audience that already had reasons to be skeptical.
Research & Discovery
Before any design work began, we invested heavily in understanding ReachNow members. The research phase included more than 50 member interviews, audits of member service calls, interviews with service representatives, and analysis of member reviews across multiple platforms. The goal wasn't just to identify pain points. It was to understand how people thought about urban mobility and what role ReachNow could realistically play in their lives.
What emerged was a nuanced picture of eight distinct member types, each with different motivations, comfort levels, and use cases for the service. These findings became the foundation for everything that followed: the personas, the workshops, and ultimately the design decisions.
Personas
Workshops & Alignment
With research findings in hand, we shifted into a series of collaborative workshops with ReachNow stakeholders. The goal was to move from individual insights to shared understanding, aligning the team around who we were designing for and what mattered most to them.
Together we defined our target demographics, pressure-tested our personas, and mapped out the ideal member journey.
That journey mapping work evolved into story mapping, giving the team a shared framework for prioritizing features and sequencing the experience. By the time we moved into design, there was genuine alignment across both teams on what we were building and why.
Journey Maps
Design & Iteration
With a clear direction established, we moved into design. The complexity of the product demanded a rigorous approach. We were designing not just for two distinct service experiences, but for the moments where they intersected and for the physical interactions that happened inside the car itself. User flows, wireframes, and prototypes were built and tested continuously, with unmoderated virtual testing and in-person moderated sessions running on a weekly cadence.
Having a dedicated ReachNow vehicle on-site throughout the engagement was invaluable. It meant we could test the physical-digital interactions in real conditions, unlocking the car, navigating the in-car controls, understanding how the experience felt when you were actually sitting in a BMW rather than looking at a screen. That kind of testing shaped decisions that wireframes alone never could have.
Final Visual Design
Outcomes
New Unified Experience
The result of a 10-month engagement was an all-new unified experience that launched across New York, Seattle, and Portland for over 100,000 ReachNow members.
Seamless Ride & Drive Experience
For the first time, members could seamlessly choose between Drive and Ride within a single app, positioning ReachNow as the only company operating multiple mobility services within one mobile experience.
1100+ Members
ReachNow grew to 1,100+ registered members and a fleet of 730 cars during the project period.
Exceeded Client Expectations
ReachNow's leadership described the outcome as exceeding their expectations, citing Smashing's ability to get inside the minds of their members and deliver a cohesive experience that would propel the business forward.