Anik
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AutoVision: Enterprise
Designing Fleet Management Software for Retail Dealerships.
Team of One(Design)
Anik • UX Designer • UX Researcher • Product Manager
Length
Feb 2023 - May 2023
Goals + Objectives
Mitigate number & types of errors in all flows to satisfactory percentage (80%)
Have a Task flow completion rate above or within (minimum) 40% - within 3 minutes
Autovision was apart of my Graduate thesis where I worked with early-stage startup founders
to create an MVP before a investor pitch round. Much of this project required cross collaboration
between myself & the 2 founders who have a background in product management & SWE.
Tools
Problem Diagnosis
AutoVision's original goal was to provide information for casual drivers, but once we realized there was a market for retail dealership software, we quickly developed a feature-rich ecosystem that could not only help casual drivers but people working at automobile dealerships. This led to asking ourselves;

‍How might we create an application within AutoVision's existing ecosystem that caters towards fleet management of retail dealerships.
Disclaimer
This is a condensed version of the entire process, not included are personas, priority matrixes, design system management & more. For the full version please contact me directly.
The best way I learned to design for multi-device platform is through creating a design system
that would be able to scale as the product sgrows & expands it's services outside of the
traditional mobile applications. This was done to maintain consistency while creating new
interactions from different devices.
Real time data at the touch of your fingertips
Real Time Data is shown with the feature of being able to change specific variables to get accurate metrics over a specific period time.
Adding Operators to Service Scheduler.
Managers can schedule servicing options for acquired vehicles and select or add new service centers (operators) to make scheduling hassle-free.
Snapshot view of your fleet's vehicle inventory
Quickly view your dealership's inventory in order to be more efficient and itemize important information such as diagnostic logs or sales data.
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
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.
Challenges: Stakeholders & B2B Design
Managing Stakeholder Expectations
Because this was a enterprise based feature, I had to work hand in hand with the software developer & PM in order to determine my constraints, manage expectations, and collaborate hand in hand as early as possible in order to meet our deadline.
Designing for Businesses.
Designing for Business might not seem like a challenge but once I again I had to pivot my target user and design based on that userbase, so it took a bit of time talking with managers or directors at these car dealerships to know what they would want within AutoVision's ecosystem & what would be potentially be feasibly.
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

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