Work

Gulfstream

lifting sales to the stratosphere

Gulfstream is a leader in business and personal aviation since 1958. When they reached out to us they had the need to bring the luxury jet showroom experience to life in a compelling and mobile digital experience.

Have you seen the interior of a private jet? The first time we had the chance to step into one of their G450s we were able to discover the overwhelming amount of details they hide inside. We needed to create an app capable of switching layouts, styles and materials in real-time for more than 62 different elements in the interior of a plane —not to mention the details in the exterior.

How can we empower a user to design a private jet in real time in an effortless way without losing sight of the plane in the process? With a high sensitivity to the fact that GulfStream is the ultimate in luxury brands, the design team explored multiple approaches to a visual style that matched the perfection of their product design.

With the finished products, designers and customers alike can effortlessly tap and drag from one feature category to another, all while maintaining a natural flow throughout the configurator experience. And with the mindset of making this a mobile showroom experience, we leveraged the hardware capabilities of the iPad to add an augmented reality layer that allows you to virtually walk through your new jet by reading data from the device’s gyroscope.

The collaboration between our teams and Gulfstream allowed us to build a crisp, engaging and virtually limitless customizable experience that takes the sales process to another level. With the help of Zemoga, they not only succeeded, but exceeded their high expectations.

The application debuted at the NBAA (literally the trade show for the jetset) in October 2012 to overwhelming praise and was hailed by Tray Crow, Gulfstream’s director of interior design, as a powerful sales tool due to it’s ability “…to show clients their vision, real time, right in front of them”.

Capabilities

The role we played

Strategy
UX/Product Design
iOS Development
QA
Project Management

Floorplan & Mid Cabin View

Design thinking

understanding problems and proposing solutions

We started with a workshop at Gulfstream’s headquarters in Savannah, Georgia involving different stakeholders from distinct disciplines both on our and the client’s side. We also had a series of one-on-one meetings that allowed us to capture more specific knowledge.

This, as usual, was time well spent. It allowed us to understand the problem and come up, in a collaborative way, with ideas that were the foundation of what the finished product is today.

Gulfstream / Zemoga Workshop (Savannah, GA)

Transformation

going from analog to digital

The books Gulfstream used as their main sales tool were a great starting point. However, a big part of the story was missing, so we spent time with Gulfstream’s design team to understand the way they worked and the needs they have. The team translated all those needs and insights into ideas. Good old paper and pencil helped us try multiple approaches without wasting time.

Design Book early sketches

User Experience

the UX is invisible and the product is king

The project had an aesthetic sensibility we referred to as “effortless elegance,” this notion applies as much to our own methodology as Gulfstream’s gorgeous aircraft.

So even though the users are empowered to perform a host of complex functions in a completely intuitive and uncannily organic manner, all this happens around the product, which shines in the center of the screen, the same way it does in the middle of the sky.

360º exterior & interior view

Technology

fitting a virtual world inside an iPad

The technical challenge wasn’t trivial at all. We needed to build an iPad app capable of handling and displaying 9 airplanes, 5 interior views and 1 exterior view, 24 configurable materials in the interior and 11 in the exterior. Additionally, it needed to work offline and loading times over 3 seconds were considered unacceptable.

The team tried multiple approaches and found that CSS 3D Transformations showed better visual results and performance than OpenGL renderings. This helped us ensure that, while in the back, four gigabytes of raw data are fed dynamically in the form of more than 30 images projected every second, the app ran smoothly and captured Gulfstream’s spirit of confidence and efficiency.

360º exterior & interior view

VISUAL DESIGN

pixel-perfect product personalization

Creating an augmented reality experience that tops the original isn’t easy. Four gigabytes of raw data fed dynamically into more than 30 images projected per second. Our UI team sweat all the details, and managed to push both native.

Color and material selection
Point-of-view switcher

Augmented Reality

making the experience truly immersive

Personalization was this project’s main goal so once that was achieved, we focused on empowering users to navigate inside the plane by offering different points of view. Then, by leveraging the native capabilities of the iPad we pulled real-time data from the gyroscope to refresh the view and simulate different angles.

This allowed for a more immersive experience that was similar to what they would see inside a real plane in the showroom, with the added value of personalization.

The gyroscope of the iPad enables an immersive experience

Get in touch with us

let’s start building better today