Project - AutoTrader.com's Vehicle Specials
This was an opportunity to look at the complete overhaul and re-design of a very important piece for vehicle merchandising, special offers. Below are just some of the pieces from the project.
Purpose
To simplify the process of creating special offers for a dealer's vehicle inventory as well as to improve the management thereof.
Challenges
Moving away from the notion that templates were special offers on the part of ATC sales staff as well as dealers
This meant overcoming a template (offer display mechanism) being considered a special offer (the actual offer's details)
Showing enough special offer details in the management list of offers so dealers did not have to select an offer to see key attributes
Formally attempting the Agile development process for the first time on a project of this size
Successes
Buy-in and support of templates being merely the display mechanism for offers
Streamlined special offer creation by eliminating unnecessary fields, using defaults, and separating out template management
By separating the notion of offers from templates/flyers, time to create a special offer was significantly reduced
Offers only required minimal fields to be created and template management, etc. became optional
Additionally, this meant searching for special offers on the consumer site was improved
This also made it easier to display all offers on a particular piece of inventory or all offers from a dealer
Provided more options for how special offers got assigned to vehicle inventory
Concepts fared very well in usability testing
Received several kudos from dealers and ATC sales team, including an email of appreciation from the VP of Sales
Opportunities and Goals
B2B - "Dealer Site"
To substantially simplify the process of creating, managing, and applying special offers to merchandised vehicles
Reduce dealer frustration
Increase usage of special offers as a means of further merchandising vehicles, including additional advertising through special spotlighting
Reduce or eliminate ATC sales team having to manage special offers for dealers
B2C - Autotrader.com
Improve indication of which vehicles have associated special offers
To make special offers easier to view and digest
To improve the ability to search for special offers
Roles and Collaboration
Acted as Sr. IxD
Huge collaboration between UX, IT, Product, Sales, and dealerships
Research
Interviewed many folks along the way including prior designer, user research team, field sales, and dealers
Reviewed multiple iterations of a click-through prototype with sales
Assembled a dealer council to gather input and feedback from, early design concepts as well as prototype reviews were shown to this group
Concepts went through ~3 rounds of usability testing
Miscellaneous Specials Research and Input.pdfMisc. notes gathered across individuals and groups
Notes from ACs and Emails on Specials.pdfMisc. notes gathered from the field
Misc. Whiteboard Sketches and Proposal of Re-design
Next, we began whiteboarding and sketching some concepts, figuring out the new way of handling special offers for dealers.
Specials_Redesign_Proposal_Orig.pdfProposal for the new approach
Wireframes, Flows, and Detailed Design Specifications
Misc. wireframes from different stages of the project are shown here.
DS_Specials_WF_v1_1.pdfInitial Release-related wireframes and detailed design specs.
DS_Specials_P2_WF_v1_1.pdfPhase 2-related wireframes and detailed design specs.
Specials_Detailed_Flows.vsd.pdfTask flows
Prototypes and Reviews
Many prototypes were built and reviewed with Sales, IT, and the dealers in the field.
Numerous versions of prototypes were created for review
Demo Script III for Specials Prototype.pdfExample script for walking through prototype
Notes for Specials Project.pdfExample feedback collected from various prototype reviews
Training Guide
I wrote the training guide to be used in the field by dealers to create specials, etc. in the new system.
SO_JobAid_jobrien.pdfJob Aid for managing special offers