Spring Festival
In-Car Game

NIO appreciates user company and keeps a close relationship with its community. Spring Festival — as the highlight of the year — was a great opportunity to connect users. Meanwhile, as the first game in-car for NIO, it was also an experimental project to gain insights on game scenarios in-car.

In this project, we creatively adopted sound interaction and red packets in car, which successfully engaged family members and produced fun moments for users, leading to quick spreading among the online community.

Under the design principles, we brainstormed play modes and settled on the core mechanic: in 10 seconds, players tap or shout to fly a Spring Festival lantern — the higher, the better. During a game round, players may also receive a lucky bag with NIO community points. At the end, they share their records to social media.

1 — Hear about game through NIO app

2 — Trigger game through NOMI or button

3 — Make a wish and start game

4 — Tap screen or shout loudly to fly lantern high

5 — Surprisingly receive lucky bag with points

6 — Share records to social media

We generated ideas into a user journey map to locate functions across different touchpoints and further communicate with different teams.

I tested ideas with an interactive prototype built in Principle and iterated the design through several rounds. After balancing project timeline and technical feasibilities, I delivered wireframes with detailed specification to UI designers and development teams.

I also designed the sound effects and background music — a key part of the multi-sensory experience.

The game was updated via FOTA ahead of Spring Festival with the trigger kept invisible. When the campaign launched on the NIO app, the trigger appeared on screen and the point distribution system opened simultaneously.

The game achieved 1,274,000+ plays involving more than 50% of cars and 40,000+ users, with 60,000+ shares and 1,200+ posts on the NIO App.

We analyzed daily data and reflected on the process. Key lessons learned:

• 01

  Car should be a touchpoint to notify users

  We released the game on NIO app, reaching only ~50% of users. Many users don't open NIO app frequently — the car itself is an important channel to keep users connected with community events.

• 02

  Important clues need clearer communication

  Next-day retention of new users dropped, likely because event posts weren't viewed after the first day — meaning new users didn't know they could receive a lucky bag.

• 03

  More considered strategy on points distribution

  The distribution strategy was too simple — lucky bags ran out by the afternoon. Only 30% of users received one. Some users stayed up late to try to get lucky bags with more points.