Anik
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AutoVision: Mobile
Creating a AR based Enterprise Application for Car Dealerships & Enthusiasts
Team of One (Design)
Anik • UX Designer • UX Researcher • Product Manager
Length
Feb 2023 - May 2023 (Academic)
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
Tools
Problem Diagnosis
When it comes to cars & in general the automotive industry in general, unless you are a car enthusiast, most casual drivers need to learn more about their vehicles to verifiably be able to do repairs or maintain their vehicles. 

People believe that learning something like cars is complex, too complex for someone to understand, or even too dull to learn, so this led me to ask the question; 

‍How might we create an application to help people learn more about cars and make learning about them more engaging?
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.
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.
Product Requirements
There were 4 mandated requirements as product features in order to give scope & constraints when developing AutoVision.
Onboarding
Multi-Platform
Product
Use Cameras
Tier Based
Subscription Plan
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 Salesmen) 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 been completed by 3/4 testers with only 1 user not being able to complete the task at hand as well as the error margin.
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
I utilized MosCOw feature prioritization method to assist in this regard.
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.
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.
We 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: Learning to work in Ambiguity
Learning a New Domain
I learned a great deal regarding the automotive industry, not just from a consumer perspective but especially from a dealership perspective. Learning how dealerships operate, what exactly goes into acquiring cars to sell or how salesmen have needs/goals to fulfill, all of that was interesting to learn about.
Designing for Multiple Platforms
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.
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.
Scan for More Info
From MSRP to MPG using AutoVision to scan a vehicle to get more information about it.
Compare OEM Parts on the fly
Need a quick price comparison for a OEM part that customer requested? AutoVision can do that for you on the spot!
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.

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

Overview
Problem
Requirements
Results & Insights
Process
Understanding
the Domain
Research
IA Map
Challenges
Design Direction
Design System
UI Explorations
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