Nissan Sentra Big Shot

Project

Nissan wanted to promote their new Sentra Nissan at the Final Four Event. The idea was to create a setup of your very own 'backyard house party.' This included a structure modeled after a 2 car garage with a basketball hoop and interactive floor, an arcade section, a photo op section with sports memorabilia in one corner, and a desk for hosts to mimic sports broadcasters.

The arcade game used a 55" TV screen, LG Steering Wheel and Gas Pedal, and a real Sentra seat. Consumers will use the steering wheel to aim, the pedal for how much power is going into each shot, and the shift paddle to shoot the ball. Nissan branding and messaging was incorporated through out to drive home messaging without taking away from the spirit of the game.

Process

First, we had to figure out the basic functionality of the game. Even though the consumer was sitting down in a racing style game, we had to give it the quick and fast paced feel of a traditional pop-a-shot. Once we had a few ideas, we created simple wireframes to get the back-end developers started on playing with what we could and could not do and which steering wheel to purchase. From the wires, they were able to create a extremely simplified example of the game for us to collaborate further on game mechanics.

Since the entire unit itself was being made from scratch, we only had renders to go off of on how to design the screen. From those measurements, I used painters tape on walls and floors to figure out the height of the screen, where it would sit (as a 55" screen was already approved by the client), how far back the seat would go and stacked boxes together to measure the height of the seat, so that when I 'sat' in the actual driver seat, I could see which areas of the screen I could utilize for what.

After collaborating with the developers and their findings, we were able to create a solid user journey, followed by wireframes of the different levels and transitions. From there, I was able to begin work on the visual design of the user interface, constantly going back and forth with developers to make sure that everything could run as smoothly as possible all through implementation and further testing.

Role

UX, UI/Visual Design