Peter Odum

The goal: Create mockups/a model for a new consumer-facing mobile (and desktop) web site (and/or native mobile app) for JD Power and Associates, aimed at consumers researching and preparing to purchase new and used cars. The site needed to generate the majority of its revenue from advertising.

This site was to take advantage of JDP's amazing name recognition and consumer familiarity, while retaining their air of impartiality and keeping users' trust. 

My role: Lead UX Designer, project leader.

My team crafted simple personas to represent real users during client discussions. They built up the team's empathy with users, and guided us to vital insights when prioritizing features. 

We created a journey map for each persona. These maps charted how users with divergent goals and expectations would engage with the site's content. 

This process led to key discoveries like users' preference for a polished, visually engaging site with magazine-like features, with rich content placed alongside J.D. Powers' trusted car ratings.  

Although we were limited in production of key page designs, we created a full taxonomy and site architecture to ensure that our designs were systematic and well thought out.

Several design principles grew out of our analysis of J.D. Power's users, existing branding and positioning, available assets and desired goals. These principles drove subsequent decisions about which design avenues to pursue.

We considered several concepts for the home screen.

One was media-rich and magazine-like.

Another had to do with finding cars on location and researching them via photos.

The third used simple touch gestures to quickly sort through options and target the vehicle a user was interested in. 

Vehicle Detail screen concepts ranged from data-focused information cards to sleeker visuals with verbatim quotes from owners. Ultimately both types of information found their way into the concept. 

We tried several comparison concepts before settling on a side-by-side view of multiple vehicles. 

Click paths for the personas yielded further insights into the kinds of screens our users might want to see.

More vehicles could be compared side-by-side on the web, with more screen real estate, than on mobile. However, the same basic architecture was used.

Mobile views were considered slightly before Desktop Web, given how many people access vehicle information on mobile devices. 

The Home concept ultimately proposed was the rich media/magazine-like layout. It felt high-quality and set J.D. Power apart from competitors, as well as affording more and better sponsorship opportunities.

The concept of helping users not only in the purchase process but in other parts of the product lifecycle was also appealing. Tracking vehicles the user owned could allow J.D. Power to help users know when to sell their current vehicle in order to maximize trade-in value. 

We also considered new technology applications for vehicles sales.