Ford motor credit company: Commercial Experience
Role: Senior Product Designer
Deliverables: Personas, Journey Map, Product Concepts, Wireframes
The Team: 4 Product Managers, 2 Junior Designers, 2 Engineers
My Responsibilities: As a senior product designer in Ford’s “Incubation Room” it was my responsibility to lead the team in discovery, guide the team with a user focus on new products or features to build next, and mentor the junior designers
Please note that some of the images presented in this project are visual interpretations and may not exactly reflect the final version of the company's products or services. No confidential information has been disclosed.
Problem
Commercial fleet owners had long been an overlooked user group at FMCC. The company decided to shift its strategy to improve the user experience specifically for this segment. My role was to research, ideate, and implement enhancements tailored to commercial fleet owners.
Approach
User Interviews – I began by interviewing owners of fleet-based businesses. I was responsible for developing the interview script, conducting the interviews, and assisting in synthesizing the data. The goal was to understand the users' needs, pain points, preferences, and workflows.
Survey - I then designed and launched a survey, reaching out to over 300 participants from our user group to gather qualitative data and identify patterns related to fleet size.
Personas – Using insights from the interviews, I created four personas to provide the team with a shared understanding of our users. We ultimately decided to focus on the small business owner persona, as they presented the most significant pain points.
Journey Mapping
With the personas and research complete, we collaboratively developed a journey map outlining the ideal commercial customer experience with Ford.
Final Journey map
Ideation
We focused on ideating solutions for the pain points identified in the journey map, using techniques such as Crazy 8 sessions, storyboarding, and dot voting.
Concept Testing
We developed four product concepts to test with our users. I wrote the script and conducted feedback sessions with 12 participants who matched our target persona.
Iteration & MVP versions
As a team, we selected the MVP that would deliver the most value to users within a short timeframe. I created the designs in Sketch and prototyped them using InVision.
Results
After gathering feedback on the concepts, the product team selected the MVP solutions to be iteratively delivered and built for production.
Learned
A key takeaway from this project was the value of a balanced production team. Collaborating with various experts across the company, particularly in commercial financing, and maintaining strong communication with stakeholders were crucial to the project’s success.