Carvana
Solution //
B2C, Design System, iOS
Role // Product Design Lead
Carvana is committed to providing customers nationwide with a seamless online car buying experience, with a focus on delivering peace of mind throughout the buying journey. As the company grew, Carvana recognized the need to re-evaluate its overall purchase experience.
Project specifications
Duration: 3 weeks
Tools:
Figma
Figjam
Usertesting.com
Deiliverables
Interaction Design:
High-fidelity interactive prototypes for key tasks on ios
UX/UI Design:
User surveys and one-on-one interviews
Personas
User journeys and task flows
High-fidelity mockups and prototypes
Design system and UI kit
Concept testing and finding workshop
Overview
Overview
As Carvana rapidly grew as an eCommerce business, unifying its various departments under a common goal became a challenge. To address this, the product team was tasked with visualizing a new end-to-end experience that prioritized providing customers with a seamless and hassle-free car buying process.
As a lead designer on the team, my role was to create a new design system that accommodated the new functionalities, and to develop a visual language that conveyed relatability and personalization to the brand.
Through my efforts, I was able to enhance the user experience, and bring a human touch to the digital purchasing journey.
Proposed solutions
With a tight deadline of 3 weeks, the team embarked on a sprint to complete the project and present to key stakeholders.
Persuade product stakeholders to shift their mindset from a siloed approach to a more centralized vision that aligns with the overall business goals.
Consolidate and stress test individual design concepts from different teams and projects, bringing them together as one cohesive unit.
How can we prominently surface crucial informations, so users can get through the flow easier?
Research & Findings
In order to better understand the weaknesses of the current car buying experience, we collaborated with the research team to conduct a diary study on the overall online car purchasing process. Through our one-on-one interviews and qualitative research, we gained valuable insights and discovered a few major findings:
Customers often expressed frustration and fatigue during the shopping and buying process
Difficulty in finding relevant information about financing, delivery, trade-ins, and other important details
Trust in the Carvana brand was also a recurring concern
Building a frame work
By gaining a deep comprehension of our users' challenges, I pinpointed essential screens to cater to their requirements, while also adding additional screens to bridge gaps in the existing process.
Create a more cohesive and efficient buying journey
Rounds of workshops and rapid sketching on white boards revealed the gaps in the existing flow. It was an important exercise for discovering which existing design patterns within the existing check out flow didn’t make sense, and how can we better patch the gap.
Establishing Visual System
While Carvana had some loose brand guidelines, applying it for user experience was never established. The style also hadn’t been updated since day 1. It does cover topics such as color, and typography, but only from a very high-level perspective. It was clear that I needed to build a system from the ground up.
I also wanted to use this opportunity to explore additional style that includes illustration, icons, a more modern color palette, button style, states, with rules of when and where to use what.
Centralized hub
Section intro
Tool tips
User-Centered Design
User-Centered Design
As I progressed with the prototype, I realized that there were two hanging questions that needed to be addressed:
The first was how to enhance the positive emotions and feelings that users experience throughout their car buying journey, in other words, how to empathize with our users
The second was how to establish trust in our brand and vehicles.
It's common for new brands to face challenges in building brand loyalty, but it's crucial to recognize that users seek familiarity and relatability in their day-to-day interactions, and they desire to feel seen and heard. Bearing this in mind, I focused on creating an experience that not only satisfied functional requirements, but also resonated with users on an emotional level. These considerations guided my approach as I continued to work on the prototype, intending to deliver an experience that leaves a lasting impression on our users.
Bring more humanity into design
Build confidence in user’s decision
Take extra step to further explain some difficult concepts
Outcomes
Carvana's stakeholders were thrilled with the team's direction, and even the upper management expressed their openness to a brand refresh after seeing some of the more daring design options I proposed. The smooth transitions and interactions between sections were particularly applauded.
In 2021, we saw a surge in demand for used cars, with a younger demographic using mobile devices to place orders. The success of our new direction was evident in the ease with which users navigated the process, and positive word-of-mouth continued to spread.
What’s Next?
Issues to address for longer-term development
Each section of the check out process needs a deeper dive in to resolve some hanging concerns from our initial research to ensure a bullet-proof 2.0 release.
Product to decide on priorities of functionality release.
Greater data visualization to aid in complexed steps that has high drop out rates. (eg: trade-in, finance, and insurance)
Prompts to encourage providing data that would improve functionality.
Clearer confirmation messages that inform users when important bench mark has happened to motivate users finishing their order in one-seating.
Lesson Learned
Workshop should be encouraged to help resolving new business problems. (This experiment greatly changed the way team works at Carvana)
People can get very suspicious when it comes to sharing confidential information (specifically around financing, banking, trade-in, insurance, and personal information) It is important to ensure information sharing is protected, and is communicated with users.
People seek approval and familiarity when doing new things. It is important to empathize with users, and always put myself in their shoes while designing.
Simplified complicated information. People can get overwhelmed with new information. Putting everything in front of users all at once can sometimes cripple users ability of decision making. Instead, create a safe environment for users to explore as they go can help boosting their confidence.
Team
—
UX Lead: Marc Tsukahira, Anthony Puglisi
UX Designer: Maggie Soun
UI Designer: Mei Li, Stella Choe