Reimagining Tutorial Content
A visuals first approach to learning.
Back when some of the team and I were working in-house at Tesla, we were tasked with creating tutorial videos for the Model 3 in an effort to streamline a very lengthy and hands on delivery experience where a team member would walk you through using your new Tesla.
“The delivery of the cars is where the investment is needed. We need to deliver three or four times as many cars. But we don’t want to have three or four times as many delivery centers. How do we make that delivery process more streamlined, less paperwork, less bureaucracy and get people really ahead of time with really well-produced instruction videos for how to use their car. And well, of course, the best instruction is like not having instructions. And you will actually be able to play all of the instructions needed for your car on your car.”
Although a Tesla operates very similarly to the majority of vehicles, there is a learning curve and a lot of technology that owners need to know how to use and navigate.
We did our research to see what others are doing for tutorial content for automotive and other technology. We found what we expected - long boring videos, often with a voice over, where it's torturous to watch.
Here's an example from Audi:
We had to innovate. We had to take a new approach. One that is easy for viewers to follow along, fast for viewers to learn form, engaging and highly relatable.
With those goals in mind, we focused on visual information and visually showing the process of usage in a simple step by step format. We first experimented by taking various photos of this process, whittled that down and developed storyboards.
Even with the visual first approach, we still needed a little more exposition for viewers and owners and opted to add interjected text cards between certain steps for that little extra context.
The result was a batch of 10 Video Guides ranging from between 20-90 seconds.
Since 2018, these video guides have been helping prospective and new owners easily learn about their new Model 3. These guides have been implemented in the Tesla App, on the Model 3 Touchscreen and on Tesla Supports website.
