Carmex Collision Repair
I. Intro
Carmex Collision Repair is a company my dad started back in the '90s. Growing up, I thought it was so cool that he was always fixing up new types of cars and that he had a stockpile of power tools at his fingertips. Now that I’ve investigated the business more, I see that collision repair is so much more than just getting to fix cool cars, it’s about helping people in a time of need.
We all have so much going on every day — we worry about finances, time, food, or whatever else life might throw our way. And sometimes it just takes one more thing to turn a normal day into a bad one.
Maybe it’s something as simple as a rainstorm that causes you to wreck and takes you from thinking about a place to get a burger for lunch to wondering how you can fix your car so that you can get to work tomorrow.
II. Research
To learn more about the experience of getting a car repair, I sent out surveys and did user interviews. One thing that struck me was how quickly one of my users felt that this event was their fault, even though the wreck was an accident. This is when I knew that this was a problem that needed empathy and compassion.
Looking through my research, I found that the key problem facing my user was fear of getting taken advantage of in a vulnerable time. To solve the problem, I had to find a way to build trust. After mapping out the user journey, I realized that this trust would need to be created quickly because it is at the time of the wreck when our user is most scared and vulnerable.
III. Define
To get started defining the problem, I distilled my research into the persona of Sara Cruz, a young woman who just recently got in a wreck and needs her car to travel to and from work.
After creating my persona, I prepped myself to attack the problem that I had found and then created three how might we statements that would help me find ways to build trust between Sara and Carmex Collision Repair.
IV. Ideate
Equipped with my How Might We Statements, I held an ideation session with four people where I gave them a limited amount of time to solve each of the problems presented. From that session, I took their notes to create an affinity map that grouped the key patterns in the feedback they presented.
V. Solution
I chose my features because each one of them would build trust with Sara in a different way. Allowing Sara to create her own estimate on a mobile app shows that the shop trusts her first and respects her knowledge. Allowing her to compare the shop with other shops shows confidence in the shop’s services, even when compared with other repair shops. Lastly, giving her updates when the estimate is incorrect or when unexpected repairs are needed shows transparency and vulnerability.
Once I decided on my features I created task flows to map out the skeleton of how the app would behave and then created wire flows to bring the features to life.
While my task flows felt complex, I was able to bring them together into simple wire flows that did not take up more than four to five screens to complete an action.
Once my user flows were complete, I conducted usability testing using the Marvel Pop application and assigned the tester two tasks: 1) Create a mobile estimate with only two repairs and 2) Check the updates to approve any suggested repairs.
After doing usability testing, I learned that my wireframes were lacking some key verbiage for navigation and also that some of the phrasing I was using for the interface was confusing. One example was that I had the prototype ask for the location of the repair, which the user interpreted to mean the geographic location for the shop, not the place on the car where the repair was needed. By doing more research on Information Architecture, I will be able to find clearer ways for the user to walk through the workflow of the application.
VI. Next Steps and Conclusion
In this project, I was able to distill the key theme of the problem facing our users and come up with workable ideas that can build trust between Carmex Collision Repair and those who need car repair but are initially wary of car shop establishments. With my usability research, I will continue to refine this product in hopes of making a feasible solution that my father’s company is able to implement. Though this final result may not be as complex as the application features I initially sketched in this project, I do know that I want the goal to be the same. If I can make people trust that Carmex Collision Repair will take care of their car like any other family member, I will build the connection that is needed to help them.
