Today’s luxury car designers spend countless hours honing the interior cabins of their cars. Every detail is refined and each facet of the interface is fine-tuned to maximize the driver’s experience. Extending this experience to the small screen, however, has been a constant challenge.
On TV, the lines are clearly drawn, with brands spending the bulk of their time creating, "montages of attraction." This technique juxtaposes shots of interiors, exteriors, smiling faces and the car in motion to persuasively summarize the experience: emotion and all. Local TV buys borrow some of these shots, but for the most part, these online experiences differ only on service, price and selection.
This paradigm has survived completely intact on the web. Brand sites get more and more advanced in conveying the emotional ties that bind, taking a broadcast approach toward experience and customization. Dealer sites have used technology to propel data delivery, showing inventory, features and prices. But the interfaces at the dealer level often leave much to be desired – almost contrary to the brand image – and are rarely experiential.
Where all these methods have failed to deliver is in technology. Users can only experience so much, for so long, without getting bored.
Branded desktop applications (BDAs) bridge the gap for luxury brands and dealers by being platform-independent. Instead of having to conform to the restrictions of large television audiences, or web browsers, you get the best of both worlds: a completely customized interface easily combining data and design.
