ROLE: UX research and Project ManagerSummary
About the Client: CarMax is the largest used car dealership chain in the US with over 100 dealerships and have sold over 5 million cars.
The mobile app serves as an entertaining and practical channel for users by providing engaging mini-game and pragmatic instrument. The concept is to integrate with Facebook platform and retrieving Favebook personal information. Then the app defines persona based on Facebook data. After special find and recommendations algorithm, the app will provide cars tailored to user's preferred vehicles.
Time: April 2013 – June 2013
Deliverables:
User research report, persona, functional prototype
Methods Employed:
Flow Models, User Research, User Interview, Paper Prototyping, Wireframe, Competitive Analysis, Persona
Research
Problem
Customers of CarMax are commonly undecided on the exact car they wish to purchase. Knowing what car type, make, model and options to select as the criteria for a buyer can be a confusing and a long and drawn out process. This often leads to potential customers leaving the dealership without buying a car and risk going elsewhere once their mind is more made up.
Besides, the effective use of mobile media is becoming increasingly important for today’s markets. Consumers are rapidly adopting mobile media as a platform to reach information. CarMax is seeking solutions from mobile application to increase brand favorability and walk-in rate.
Scope Requirements From the Client
- The mobile tool needs to lead a user from a series of criteria, to a recommended limited set of models
- Tool needs to address the three main persona types provided by the client
- The final step of the tool leads the user to a CarMax dealership with a specific car that is on their lot that they are ready to test drive and buy
Business Goal
Competitive Best Practices Audit
Persona(Provided by Client and Approved to Show)
Interview and Findings
The Interviewee recruiting was selected based on the three different persona types.The team created an interview script of 15 questions that helped define our proposed Carmax mobile tool. We have asked 2 participants per persona including 4 male and 2 female, aged from 22 to 36, single or married. The participants have either purchased a car in the past three months or are looking to buy a car in the next three months. The interview aims to:- Define the main categories of what they identify as important when buying a car
- Define the top features or amenities they select for their car
- Clarify the pain points they face in the car purchase decision process
What we learn from the interview are the fact that customers generally have the distrust feeling toward dealers, are more willing to get recommendations from friends, have difficulty calculating the ideal car meeting budget, feel complicated about filtering searching results and how to systematically manage the list of cars they are interested in.
Ideation
UX Strategy
By getting FB personal information (e.g. gender, age, job, location, relationship, education etc.), the app will define which type of persona the user is based on Facebook data and provides cars recommendation tailed to their needs.This design also takes advantages of Facebook data let users to see friend's recommendations.
Wireframes
Mobile Sitemap
Prototype Screenshots
(App upon Request)
Main function
- Process of gathering users' FB data
- Start the game and get recommendations
- Add favorite cars to a list
- Contact a dealer about a specific car selected
Results
The mobile application includes features and tools that help users navigate and find the cars according to their demographic. App will serve as an entertaining and practical channel for users by providing engaging mini-game and pragmatic instrument. After special find and recommendations algorithm, the app will provide cars tailored to user’s preferences.
Main features include:- Create entertaining process by gamification
- Provide favorite function to keep interested cars in a list
- Find or contact dealers easily
- Intuitive filter function
- Clear list of price and features based on location
