Case Study
How user research informed the short and long-term visions for replacing a passive pre-delivery experience with an engaging onboarding experience.
Situation
Role: Senior User Researcher on an 8-person research team supporting the entire Customer Experience org. Rather than being embedded within a product team, we were assigned new research requests each 2-week sprint from any digital domain.
Intermittent researcher engagement on projects made it difficult to build stakeholder relationships and plan ahead to ensure the right methods are conducted at the right times to properly support decision making.
Kick-off calls led me to discovery overlap in two workstreams aiming to improve the pre-delivery experience for customers purchasing new vehicles.
Tasks
As a Senior User Researcher on a small research team, I was assigned research requests that varied in readiness.
- One sprint I was tasked with collecting user feedback on the designs for a pre-delivery tracker for customers waiting on their new vehicle order, requested by the Mobile Experience team.
- The following sprint I was tasked to help prioritize future concepts for features/capabilities aiming to turn passive waiting time between ordering and delivery of a new vehicle into a more engaging experience.
Actions
I delivered the research requested of me. By developing relationships with my stakeholders, I was better able to understand the big picture to design and backlog studies to better inform key decisions through deeper research.
- RITE testing pre-delivery tracker
- Interviews gathering user sentiment on future concepts
- Pitch research roadmap to advocate for deeper learning
- Backlog study designs to be picked up in a later sprint
Results
More designers and product owners attending my office hours looking to partner with Research from the beginning of the project!
Short-term:
- Quickly evaluated pre-deliver tracker MVP to unblock development
- Provided context for what is/isn't appealing about future concepts
Long-term:
- Gained stakeholder trust and committment to a research roadmap for more timely research
Customers feel bombarded by messaging yet lost on where to go next.
Current digital onboarding experience is limited to the single moment of delivery.
If customers skip the onboarding experience within myBrand apps, they are unable to return.
Onboarding content is the same for all, but ICE and EV owners have unique needs.
How might we guide discovery, learning, and set-up through a customer’s entire journey getting a new vehicle?
Build a relationship with our customers before delivery by making it fun and rewarding exploration.
Create sustainable, scalable patterns for other teams to take into their projects.
RITE testing to quickly revise the flow and interactions for a predelivery tracker.
The research request was to test the usability of the MVP and development was waiting for designs. The Designer had specific questions and a few safe assumptions. What expectations do they have for delivery date estimates? What's the right frequency of notifications? What level of personalization is beneficial?
- Refine designs for the tracker via the RITE method so devs can begin work.
Stakeholder interviews surfaced bigger research questions. What new things do vehicle owners need to learn about? When is the right time to engage them?
- Organize validated user needs vs assumptions and propose follow up research to influence work post MVP.
9 participants in 5 days
19 issues discovered / enhancements made
Improved discoverability
Participants were quickly discovering onboarding content (e.g. AR, EV charger installation guidance).
Displayed dates to match expectations
Participants preferred a two-week or 1-month range to a specific date that frequently changes.
Enhanced visuals
After the first participant, we were inspired to embrace a more enthusiastic and whimsical tone (e.g. celebration animation, traffic cone for delay status) which partipants enjoyed.
Value of MVP in a participant's words:
Not having to dig through emails to find status and/or historical dates related to the vehicle purchase.
How this is useful:
Self-Service. The tracker saves them from the task of calling the dealership or customer service to check status.
An order hub. Referring to tracking information all in one place and presented visually addresses a pain point.
Progressive disclosure. Adding dealership contact information when it's time to arrange for pick up. *Reserving this touchpoint for dealerships would allow them to manage their own customer relationships.
How this could be more useful:
More updates while in production. They are satisfied with the number of touchpoints on the tracker and would appreciate more updates during production.
Specificity. More specific disclaimers about the manaufacturing delays that may occur would be much appreciated.
More learning content. Guiding new vehicle owners through content about new features and capabilities while they await their new vehicle. *Especially first-time EV owners.
Unpredictability in the supply chain market has caused global disruption of markets. Products, including vehicles, are taking longer to be delivered to consumers. Many experience a dip in enthusiasm between ordering and receiving a new vehicle.
In any circumstance, whatever the time between ordering a new vehicle and receiving it may be, GM wants to maintain customers’ enthusiasm during the time it takes to be delivered. After all, they have a brand-new vehicle on the way and that is exciting!
Interviews to gather user sentiment on future concepts.
Business Objective: Maintain enthusiasm from time of purchase through delivery of the new vehicle.
- Turning the passive wait-time before delivery into an engaging experience with our brand
- Enhancing the delivery day experience
The Advanced team has brainstormed forward-thinking ideas for features/capabilities that can turn the passive waiting time between ordering and delivery of the vehicle into a more engaging experience. User feedback was required to move forward with confidence.
Learning why certain concepts are more appealing.
The team wanted to know which concepts to pursue. We agreed vetting concepts with our target customer base would prepare them for a follow-up quantitative prioritization study.
- 60-min moderated user interviews
- 8 participants, all recently purchased a new vehicle within the past year
- 12 features, randomizing the order presented
Reporting findings and recommendations.
- Presented the emotional rollercoaster participants experienced ordering and recieving a new vehicle in the past year, and opportunities based on unmet needs.
- Walked through reactions to each feature and recommendations on if/how to move forward.
- Highlighted most and least desireable concepts (and why).
- Outlined next steps to prepare for the quantitative prioritization study.
Gaps/Opportunities:
Participants asked for a progress tracker to keep tabs on their order from one spot. The team is already working on a progress tracker. Post MVP, I recommend talking with dealers to discover opportunities to enhance and celebrate the moment of picking up a new vehicle.
Leveraging AR/VR capabilities in the shopping experience is a more appropriate utilization of the technology. Most new vehicles are not available to test drive. The ability to see and try out in AR and/or VR would be better than the existing views on vehicle brand websites, which one participant throught looked "cartoony".
What to avoid:
An under-designed and over-produced unboxing experience. Participants were more interested in knowing the vehicle is brand new than doing the unboxing themselves. There were many concerns about the amount of plastic and proper disposal.
Leaning too much into gamifying learning. Participants were hungry to learn about their new vehicle. Providing modular content that can be consumed in small chunks is enough if more than enough to motivate them to engage.
Pitch research roadmap for deeper learning and backlog research plans.
I was able to pitch detailed plans for follow up research to each workstream lead now that immediate requests were delivered.
- Refined designs for the pre-delivery tracker to ensure MVP is user friendly and valuable.
- Gathered feedback on future concepts to inform the team why they are/aren't appealing.
- Formed new and more specific research questions and proposed research methods and recruitment/segmentation strategies for deeper learning.
- Gained stakeholder trust and buy-in to backlog follow up research.
What is the 'happy path' for utilizing all/most services?
Interviews with car dealers and GM employees who heavily use the app and add-ons to better understand the ecosystem of services. *Segmenting EV and ICE vehicle owners because of their unique needs.
What content should be included in the first sign on experience to avoid overwhelming new users?
Audit all services and learning content across the brand to include in a card sort with EV and ICE vehicle owners. What are you familiar with vs. what is new to you? What would you do before getting your new vehicle vs. when you pick it up vs. the first week of ownership vs. never?
Prioritize onboarding experience content and test flow with user segments based on card sort analysis. Refer to analysis when defending design decisions.
What are users engaging with today and post MVP?
Workshop with service owners to gather KPIs and existing methods of measuring performance.
Track user engagement (e.g. views, clicks, funnels) for EV and ICE vehicle owners and monitor behavioral analytics to better understand the impact of design decisions, making revisions as needed.
Which future concepts are most valuable to users?
Conduct a Kano study to gather user sentiment and aid in prioritization. Design and build an survey with ~10 features, recruiting EV and ICE vehicle owners, and analyzing segments with 100+ responses for higher confidence.
Reflection
Project takeaways
Why I'm sharing this work
I was able to see the bigger picture and help connect the right people and teams.
I learned a lot more about Design Ops and the trade offs between planned and assigned work vs. embedded, more autonomous work.
What worked well
Revisiting the objectives and research questions in stakeholder interviews and proposing impactful research methods.
Thoroughly documenting my research plans so I and/or another Researcher can pick up the work through our research request ticket system.
What I would do differently
We timeboxed RITE testing to 1 week. We could have continued with 4+ more participants because we were still discovering issues/enhancements.
Assign myself more time to advocate for the follow up research to ensure it is prioritized appropriately.
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