RAIRDON'S KIRKLAND
The future of car buying
Role: UX Designer
Parameters:
This was a website redesign concept project for a mock client. I was a solo UX Designer and the project was limited to a 2-week sprint culminating in a presentation. This was my first time creating digital wireframes and card sorting, and my first time using Sketch and InVision.
The specific assignment included the following limitations:
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Must showcase e-commerce in optimal task flow;
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Must design as web desktop platform; and
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Must use persona provided by instructors.
Assumptions:
Since this was a mock client, I made the following assumptions about their needs:
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Client is interested in adding an online car buying experience to their site;
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Client cares about maintaining their dealership and presence in the Kirkland; and
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The project ends with a digital prototype and a high-fidelity mock-up.
Purpose
My purpose was to practice an end-to-end UX design project.
My goals were to:
1. Dig deep to discover the true problem
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Meet Lauren
“When something catches my eye, I must have it, whatever the cost.”
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Likes to show off her purchases
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Likes to keep up on tech trends
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Doesn’t like lengthy checkout processes
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Doesn’t like not enough product details
Although we were given a persona, I wanted to do additional research to dig deeper beyond the provided persona pain points.
I conducted three user interviews of participants who fell within the same demographic of Lauren – a digital native who is a smart consumer and wants efficient checkout processes. Overall, I wanted to learn about user emotions in the car buying experience and have the participants take me through their journey.
Beyond the pain points provided by the assigned persona, through the interviews I learned the true problem had to do with wasting time.
“Don’t waste my time.
I want to do what I want, when I want.”
Interview Participant 2
I went through and prioritized the major pain points that I would address in this project and organized in what part of the process I would address them in. For example, the Lauren’s pain point of lengthy checkout process could be addressed through information architecture, interaction design, and helped define the problem.
Download my data synthesis document to see the full table (PDF, 91KB).
After synthesizing the data, I narrowed in on a Lauren’s problem and the solution.
Problem
Lauren needs a way to buy a car completely online and have it shipped to her because she is frustrated by the lengthy checkout process and doesn’t want to waste her time picking up a car at a car dealership.
Solution
How might we create a car buying website that shortens the car buying process and ships the car to her door?
To determine the what businesses were already doing online car buying, I did some competitive research. No dealership was offering a buy-off-the-lot option plus a completely online car buying experience. The closest competitors were completely online, such as Vroom and Carvana, and online marketplaces that facilitated transactions like Craigslist.
2. Apply out-of-the-box thinking
to create design solutions
How simple could the car buying experience be?
Lauren wants an efficient checkout processes. What if Lauren could bypass sign-up and sign-in and use a guest checkout to buy a car?
I also wanted to balance the client’s need to maintain a physical and geographic presence in Kirkland. I came up with a global navigation.
I did comparative analysis on specifically guest checkouts from Walmart, Urban Outfitters, Crate and Barrell, and Nike.
Would the design meet Lauren’s needs? I conducted 3 rounds of usability testing to find out.
Round 1 with 2 participants testing a paper prototype. Round 2 with 4 participants on an iterated digital prototype. Round 3 with 3 participants with a further iterated prototype.
Most notable changes in the iterations included:
I tested the idea of a comparison or wishlist feature. This tested very poorly with one participant calling it “useless.”
I did further research that validated this sentiment from the Nielson Norman Group. Carts are where people do comparison shopping and decide whether or not to buy a product. Wishlists and favorites are more for sharing with others what you want to buy.
The term “vintage” versus “new” was too confusing. Although my intent was to address Lauren’s preference for retro products, I received feedback that the word “vintage” would be better suited as a filter and was not a clear juxtaposition to “new car.” I actually learned about the mental model of users by receiving this feedback during usability testing and not through card sorting.
What features were validated through testing?
Users found the progress bar in the checkout process helpful. Lauren would appreciate the visibility of her system status as she goes through the process.
Also, users appreciated the language under the phone number input field. Lauren should feel in control and knowledgeable about how her information is being used. She is a smart shopper and the design should reflect a recognition of that.
See all my wireframes below for the optimal path of purchasing a car online using a guest checkout.
3. Tell the story to the client
In my presentation, I acknowledged that I was asking the client to consider something very different than their current business model. After playing a video of Lauren going through the prototype, I shared this quote:
“That was scary easy.”
Usability Test, Round 3, Participant 3
I assured the client that we were in new territory. I made the analogy to how people used to buy televisions. It was unheard of to purchase online and receive a TV shipped to your door. We were ahead of the curve in revolutionizing car buying.
I anticipated that a large part of the pitch to the client would be to manage their emotions around entering a new market. To get on board with this unconventional design, I told Lauren’s story through two journey maps.
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Lauren’s current experience starts with her being excited and ends with her being tired, angry, and bitter. Lauren leaves the dealership without buying a car.
Not only does the dealership potentially lose her as a customer forever, but Lauren is tweeting, posting, and messaging throughout her experience. The dealership may lose out on hundreds and thousands of potential customers that are connected to Lauren through social media.
Lauren uses Rairdon’s Kirkland to complete the whole car buying experience from their website and gets her car shipped directly to her door within a week. She gets to spend her time doing things she loves - showing off her purchases to all her friends and posting pictures of her car on social media.
Without even stepping a foot onto the lot, the dealership has sold a car. Lauren is happy and all her social media followers see her experience.
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To give the client a better idea of what a shipped product might look like, I created a high fidelity mockup of the home page.
I decided to choose Open Sans as my typeface because it balances the needs of user Lauren (aesthetically minimalistic and highly readable) and the needs of the business Rairdon’s (evoking reliability and quality). Similarly, I chose the company name to be displayed in the Baskerville typeface to emphasize reliability and steadiness.
(I did not use the logo of the actual business due to copyright.)
In choosing the color palette, I maintained the bright primary and secondary colors that reflect the personality of the company’s current website, but utilized them sparingly for maximum impact when viewed through the eyes of Lauren.
I also ended my presentation with recommendations for the future:
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Go mobile! Lean in further into Lauren’s preferences for mobile devices.
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Add social media. Lauren will show off her purchase on social media anyway, why not make it even easier for her to do it?
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Test the visual design. Conduct further testing on high fidelity mockups to determine what the UI communicates to Lauren.
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Legal review. Buying a car involves binding agreements, so work with legal counsel to make sure the legal side checks out.
What did I learn?
Interviewing is an art.
Make the interview participants feel comfortable. I got more insightful information when the participants felt comfortable. I purposefully made the interviews more of a conversation rather than a list of questions. A little appreciation and a lot of active listening goes a long way.
I may be in the middle of a stressful 2-week sprint, but when sitting down with a participant giving up their time, they should have no inkling of that. They don’t need to know all the messy design bits behind the scenes.
Trust my instincts.
Sometimes tools don’t work. I tried card sorting when assessing information architecture and kept getting inconsistent results. Everyone’s mental model was different. Considering the time I had left in the sprint, I made a judgment call to cut my losses and pivot. I decided to trust my intuition and use critical thinking to determine the site map and navigation flow. I ended up learning about mental models of users through their feedback in usability tests.