Overview

About the project

This Vehicle Service Scheduling tool is an upgrade to a current service scheduler linked to the General Motors brand sites (Cadillac, GMC, Chevy, Buick), pictured below. The aim of this redesign is to reduce the time it takes to complete the task and make the scheduling experience more intuitive, by utilizing the preferred settings of authenticated users to auto populate any areas we can, such as customer info, appointment date & time, and even services needed. We also wanted create a more visually pleasing experiece by producing a clean design, as well as having a mobile-first approach, focusing on a new dark-theme, mobile app experience, which will then be followed by the light-theme mobile website, and desktop experiences.

Though I had a hand in the production as a whole, which we will touch briefly on, I was the lead designer of the "Add Additional Services" portion of the application, a sub task a user may experience, so that will be a main focus of this case study. The improvements being made to the processt that is currently in place will create a more intuitive and smooth user experience, while also adding to the opportunity of increased revenue for each appointment, by making it easier to add a service to the appointment while making the customer aware of available offers. 

Active Team Size:

Design: 1 Sr. Product Designer, 1 Product Designer, 1 Visual Designer
Business: 1 Project Owner, 4 Project Managers
Development: 1 Lead dev, ~20 devs

Duration:

March 2022 - current

My Role:

I was the lead UX resource. My responsibilities included:

• User research
• Ideation
• Wireframing & prototyping
• User testing
• Communication with stakeholders
• Handoff and consultant to developers

Current version of the vehicle scheduling tool

The Challenge

The extensive time it takes to complete a task in the current experience of scheduling a vehicle service appointment, has lead to a reduction of successful completions of the task.

The Solution

To create a more intuitive experience, taking advantage of automatic preference population, and produce a cleaner design that makes navigating the tool easier and more visually pleasing. 

User Research

Get to know the user

Before we move on to the design process, we want to get to know our users. Knowing the people who use the application gives you to opportunity to be empathetic while designing. This helps in creating something a customer would actually want to use! Because this is a customer facing application, there will be a wide variety of users. This ranges from older car enthusiests with many vehicles, to single parents with a couple, and young first time drivers. In order to design a tool that works well for everyone, user research needs to be conducted. To do this, we did market research and interviewed potential users at dealerships. We then gathered all the information we found and compiled into a few user personas to reference during the creation process. 

Here are a few common painpoints we found...

Scheduling:

• Online scheduling ease is a painpoint
• Customers who prefer to call to schedule service may have difficulty getting through to speak to someone
• It often takes longer than 4 days to get an appointment

Selecting Services:

• Timing estimates are not available online
• Pricing estimates are sometimes available and can be different from dealership pricing
• Parts availablity is not considered
  

Preferences:

• Takes too long to get an appointment
• Preferences selected online are not always considered 
• Appointment availability is not always accurate
  

Design Sprint

How to solve the problem

The first step to creating a fast and intuitive scheduling tool was to hold a design sprint. This is a week-long collaborative brainstorming workshop, geared towards generating solutions for the tool as a whole, in a fun and creative environment, by analyzing the problems & challenges as well as ideas to come up with potential design solutions. 

Design Challenge

How might we enhance end to end UX for customers around vehicle service appointments so that GM improves customer satisfaction and dealerships work efficiently?

Attendees

There was a total of 16 participants, consisting of Project Owners/Managers, Business Analysts, and Product designers

Activities

• Persona and field research reviews
• Expert interview + How Might We
• Lightning demos
  
• Crazy 8's
• User journey mapping
  
• Lo-fi sketching consolidated into Mid-fi wireframe
• Moderated user testing

Journey Mapping

Concept Sketching to Mid-fi Wireframe

After completing the user flow, a lo-fi ideation concept (to the right) was created taking into account all the most important features needed for a happy path scenario [open alert > open scheduler > all appointment details prepopulated > confirm appointment > appointment scheduled]. We then elaborated on this idea, focusing on a more intuitive flow/layout and the addition of the "add service" functionality, and turned it into a mid-fi first iteration (below).

Improvements made to mid-fi first iteration:

• Wireframed in figma
• Refined the main page that displayed all information, laying it out more intuitively
• Added more detailed information
• Explored sub tasks, Adding Additional Services, Edit Appointment Date & Time, and Edit Advisor in order to be user tested
  

User Testing

Strategy & Findings

After the mid-fi wireframes were approved, we created a more realistic feeling prototype that went even further into the sub tasks. This is what would be used in the first round of user testing, which consisted of 5 users that were asked to complete 3 tasks each. These tasks were to 1.) complete a "happy path" online appointment scheduling with no alterations to the suggested options, 2.) adding an additional service to the appointment (seen in journey map), and 3.) scheduling an appointment with no prompting from dealership.

For the sake of this case study, I am going to be focusing on task #2, since that is the area I was the lead designer.  Here were are our major findings:

Task 2

• Main page was intuitive
• Easy to find where to add additional services
• Enjoyed the filtering options
• Needed more information about the service tiers (Good/Better/Best)
• Liked to see available offers, but was confused by the placement and lack of information on how to redeem
  
• Adding the service itself was a little confusing
• Overall very user-friendly

Visual Design

High Fidelity Design

After compiling the findings from the first user testing, I was able to create a second iteration that solved most of the issues we found. From there, that version was reviewed by stakeholders and went through a second user testing. After going through this process a few more times, though not always including user testing, a final, high fidelity iteration was completed:

Landing page

This is the main screen the users land on when scheduling an appointment online. Spacing and grouping have been improved, as well as simplifying the color pallet and font choices. 

This page gives the user the ability to view their recommended services, based on mileage based maintenance schedules and cloud based telemetrics readings, add additional services if needed, the first available appointment time, thier dealership and transportation options, as well as the customers information.

Adding Additional Services

The functionality of adding additional services to an appointment has seen considerable improvements, including spacing, grouping, and heirarchichal based font changes. The description of the services and differences between pricing tiers was clarified, while making available offers more prominent and easier to apply.

Adding a service is now a minimal click process, that is intuitive and easy to complete. If more than one service needs to be added, this can be done within the same action as the first one, adding all that is needed before selecting "Add Service and Update", which will take the user back to the main screen, populating the Selected Services area with the new additions.  

Conclusion

Reflection & Moving Forward

The strategy behind the design for this application was centered on making the appointment scheduling process as quick and easy as possible. We were able to nail down a process that  has accomplished a 50% reduction of time to complete a task, and achieved a projected increase in total appointments by 5-10%, which is about 70k appointments (at $80 / appointment), gaining $5M in revenue ($2M conservatively).

Though this case study was long, it does not tell the whole story. From here, the iterative design process is still in the works, allowing for small improvements where needed, as well offering guidence for edge case scenarios. We also created hi-fidelity mockups based on the platform the experience takes place in (mobile app, mobile website, desktop website) and branding color and font options.

As stated before, the design process does not end when the mockups have been delivered. I have continued to collaborate with developers, ensuring any questions they have are answered, as well as continuing communication with the business and stake holders. Having these relationships with other members of the application creation process, and working in an agile mindset ensures alignment and keeps the door open for improvement.

Thank you and please check out some of my other work!