SCORM

Process

Quick Observations

Not necessarily a usability audit but just a few quick observations on what could be wrong with this product page.

Header(?) What's the Goal?

At first glance this seems like it could be a useful header for a landing page but it's not on a landing page, which is confusing because -The secondary text indicates that it should be used for a sign up portal instead of being on this page. So with these critics, it becomes more of a question on why it's on this page at all, like what is the goal?

TOS Scroll Legal Liability.

TOS Scroll in a fixed window, may seem like a good idea, but because of legal reasons I would advise that you either have the users actually go through the entirety of the TOS & then agree OR you have it as a small but clickable blurb when a user signs up.

Account Types: More Organization Needed

With all of these choices for different account types, it may overwhelm customers on what to select or know what they selected, how each of the different types of accounts differ from one another, & doesn't have a clear hierarchy.

Design Iteration

Current Experience vs Redesigned.

Product Dashboard UI

For the Product Dashboard I wanted to make the UI easier for exploration, understanding product offerings, & create a more cohesive experience.

Personal Account Wizard UI

Process

Design Iterations

Landing Page Workflows

Gaining Domain Knowledge

Starting from Zero

I am not a car guy & I generally do not have any clue on how cars work, so this was a big challenge for me. I did have a few assumptions but my biggest assumption was that only casual Drivers or maybe Car Enthusiasts would be my core target audience for AutoVision.

Understanding & Narrowing the Scope using Stakeholder Mapping

Mapping out potential stakeholders in order to determine scope for the project allowed me to narrow down the focus while understanding how the domain works between stakeholder relationships.

Research & Synthesizing Insights

A screenshot of my research repository which can be viewed in full, here.

In order to test my assumptions, I initially conducted 5 user interviews.

However I realized down the line that I became pigeon-holed & decided to expand my interviewees to 7 to seek out SME's or subject-matter-experts.

I utilized Dovetail to aid in analyzing & synthesizing our user interviews. (It's such a good tool)

71%

Lack of Knowledge

Participants claimed that
that learning about cars didn’t
interest them or were
afraid of damaging their car.

2/7

Worked at Dealerships

These 2 individuals ended up
giving me inside information
on the retail & enterprise
side of the automotive industry.

57%

Financial Motive

For most people, financial motives
were the biggest factor towards
car maintainence& knowledge.

"We couldn't diagnose the issue with the car before we bought it"

Participants stated that prior to bringing over a car whether it was a dealership or consumers - that they wished they had known the problems before they even bought the car & how common they were.

"Selling cars is tough, who knows if a loan is approved so our probability of gaining profit. decreased"

For car dealerships, there's always a risk to putting a bid on a car in order to bring it to the lot & so there's additional financial risk when it comes to repairs & that in itself reduces the chances of loan approval on the consumer end & eventually that will affect the dealerships' profit margin.

Pivoting the Direction - Quickly

As I had mentioned earlier, I sought out SME's to give me a better grasp of the automotive industry & through those conversations, I had to drastically pivot my direction, going from a purely consumer product to a product that affected retail businesses specifically - car dealerships.

Creating Personas for Business Needs

Creating personas initially was a challenge because of how rapidly I had to change the direction of Autovision. I had a long mental block before the pivot But once I pivoted, it allowed me to create personas that would meet business needs.

The personas targeted two different audiences while splitting one audience into different segments to create a 3-tier subscription plan.

Feature Prioritization

Once we learned what our interviewees previous and current experiences were, I used the data as a way to thin of various features in order to avoid feature creep & understand how to implement high priority features.

I utilized MosCOw feature prioritization method to assist in this regard.

Conceptualizing Interactions & Flows

Mapping Out User flows

The maps served as a mental model for me whilst I constantly gathered research & feedback in each iteration.

The map below is the core pillars of the app which give me a high level overview of features & goals needed.

I had to change a lot of my flows or rework them entirely due to the change of my direction. The flows below represent that pivot.

What Did I Focus On?

While I did build out all 4 workstreams, in this instance, I will be exploring the 'Dealership' section of AutoVision.

The overall goal of the Dealership flow is allowing Management at Car Dealerships to take a look at newly acquired vehicle's common issues.

How did I begin?

I created 4 mandated features as product requirements in order to give myself constraints when developing AutoVision.

Onboarding

Multi-Platform
Product

Use Cameras

Tier Based
Subscription Plan

Creating a System from Scratch

I developed a design system in order to maintain consistency across platforms & to create a level of documentation for UI Components

Explorations of UI

Menus: Radial vs Contextual

Designing menus especially for touch-based devices is a tricky situation. I initially wanted to work with the radial menu but based on my research it would be more ideal to stick with a traditional contextual menu.

1. Muscle Memory makes radial menus tougher to use & require prior adoption.

2. Radial Menu's have a Interaction cost (click & then dragging) that a lot of people may be frustrated with or confused by.

Making Common Issues - Common Sense

The scanned vehicle screen is supposed to have multiple drop down menus that showcase different factors of said vehicle & one of those is Common Issues.

The first version of the menu had a lot of holes in the design. Based on feedback from SME's the biggest issues were;

‍1. Lack of clear direction on what to do next

2. How can they see more details on what the common issues are?

I turned each of the tabs into actual cards & added CTA buttons to give users the guidance they sought when they expanded the dropdown. I also color coded each of the cards to show the urgency level of each issue.

Each of these feature explorations required a lot of communication between myself & stakeholders in order to create a product that is aligned with business constraints while maintaining pace to reach the deadline.

Example of Managers can use AutoVision to view common issues for vehicles.

Dealerships can view maintained & unmaintained issues for vehicles & repair costs as well.

Managers can take a photo of a car in order to gain information about the car, including car parts & common issues.

What were the Results?

Useability Testing the Final Designs

The results from testing this particular flow was mixed suffice to say. I found a need for the end user (car dealership management) but the key to any good product is execution from the job executor's perspective.

The above chart details the results with 4 testers for this flow & it's a even 50/50 split on completing the task at hand as well as the error margin.

The Chopping Block

Through out the process, I had to cut out several features in order to meet the deadline but also because implementation of the feature would be too complex in a real world setting.

The biggest cut feature for the dealership flow was depth mode, which was supposed to allow for highly detailed information of a vehicle's interior & exterior that would be useful for dealerships to have.

Doing Better to get 75% Minimum

In order to increase the task flow completion rate, I would try to simplify the UI elements on the vehicle page, due to both users claiming that dropdowns were NOT obvious options to finding the common issues buttons in order to proceed to the end state.

I would also restart the project from scratch in order to implement Object Orientated UX to determine what the key objects are, relationships between those objects. call-to-actions, & attributes in order to grasp the full scope of the project from the beginning rather than reworking & backtracking because of specific requirements/business needs.

I also revised the final screens in order to push the envelope for my own design skills & correcting my own mistakes to create a better experience for my target audience.

My own Learnings

I learned to work in unfamiliar waters by learning how to design dashboards for tablets & learning about a whole new domain while using that data to inform my own design decisions that will help with business needs.

"When you hit your lowest point, you are open to the greatest change" - Avatar Aang