At first glance, this seems like a copy of Apple's approach. The key difference being that Apple's products are extraordinarily usable out of the box. The Apple Genius exists to support users when their Apple product breaks. The BMW Genius exists - it seems - to show users how to operate their product in the first place.
Whilst BMW pioneered in car infotainment with iDrive, their offerings have always suffered from poor usability. To be fair, they are not alone - the majority of today's in-car interfaces are neither user-centric or context-centric. At best, they are a bit clunky. At worst, they are are unsafe.
Enter the BMW Genius. No doubt a big part of their role will be to dazzle potential customers with demonstrations of in-car technology in action. But it seems they will also be charged with smoothing over the usability cracks of BMW's in-car experience.
130 Geniuses by the end of 2013 will go a long way. Assuming these are paid just £25,000 a year, that's an annual investment of £3.25million in people alone. For less than a fifth of that investment, BMW could establish an extensive, global user experience unit tasked with researching and redesigning in-car interfaces. And when technology is designed around a user, who needs a genius to help them figure it out?
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