Bridgestone | Innovating a Multi-Service Ecommerce Experience
- Laura Smith
- Oct 2, 2024
- 3 min read
Updated: 6 days ago
Extensive discovery & design project to determine an innovative e-commerce experience that seamlessly integrates the online booking of both tyre & auto services.
Project: Bridgestone, Ecommerce Website, UX Discovery & Design Phase
My Role: Senior UX Designer
Expertise: UX Research, User Persona Creation, Workshop Facilitation, Prototyping, User Testing, UI Design, Design Presentation.
Overview
As a leading tyre product & service provider across AU & NZ, Bridgestone also saw a key opportunity to leverage their brand reputation & client base to offer auto servicing in addition to tyres. Whilst this has been offered to clients for several years, the online booking experience did not provide users with an efficient way of booking tyre fitments online, let alone complete a multi-service booking of tyres and auto-services together in the one experience.
An extensive program of work kicked off in late 2023, commencing with in-depth business & product discovery, followed by the creation of an interactive prototype and user testing to determine an innovative yet familiar experience for users to book & manage all of their automotive needs.
Project stats
To wrap up the discovery phase of the program of work, a two day solutioning workshop was run in-person with the client to explore, uncover & gather all opportunities across multiple flows of the e-commerce site.
As Senior UX Designer, I lead the planning and facilitation of these workshops, producing over 100 rapid sketches & wireframes from multiple rounds of ideation activities.
My Impact
Planned, prepared and facilitated multiple client workshops, both virtually & in person; the first was a user discovery workshop to examine, validate & build out the user personas.
Combined output from the user persona workshop together with competitor research & user journey mapping activities to produce the final user persona artefacts.
Produced the mobile-first lo-fidelity wireframes for over fourteen screens, across three key user flows for the ecommerce site, including the home page, tyre and auto service booking widget, product listing pages, cart, scheduling & checkout steps.
Transformed the wireframes into an interactive prototype, preparing the end-to-end booking experience for three key user flows plus alternate pathways to produce an almost realistic online booking experience.
Supported the client to curate and run user testing of the prototype through the online platform, Maze, completing 30 un-facilitated user tests; facilitated user tests were completed by the client due to budget restrictions.
Synthesised & prepared a report for all results from the un-facilitated user tests, presenting these back to the client, including recommended amendments to be implemented for the prototype and areas of opportunity for any second round user testing.
User persona artefacts were produced following a persona validation workshop, and supplemented with supporting research & competitor analysis.
Interactive Prototype
Once all lo-fidelity wireframes were produced for the priority screens, these were presented to the client and feedback then implemented. The wireframes were then used to produced an interactive prototype to produce as realistic online booking experience as possible.
The prototype allowed for user testing of three of the key user flows, including alternate pathways; these user flows to be tested were:
Online booking of tyre fitment, adding an auto service to the booking
Online booking of tyre fitment only
Online account creation following the online booking
User Testing Outcomes
What's next
The wireframes & prototype of the Ecommerce booking flow for tyres have been finalised following the completion of user testing and internal review from Bridgestone stakeholders.
The next phase will deliver mid-fidelity wireframes for the following areas:
Auto servicing
Product comparison
Returning customer
Multi vehicle management
Sales admin portal
Unhappy user paths
Additionally, a prototype will be produced for the Returning Customer UX and undergo moderated and unmoderated usability testing.
Challenges & Learnings
The key challenge from such a large program of work has been maintaining a clear vision for the deliverables to deliver against project objectives whilst guiding the client through multiple phases, activities and workshops.
I've relied on my strong interpersonal, organisation & time management skills to consistently support and drive the project forward, to deliver a high standard of UX Design work.
Learnings from this experience have only further strengthened my belief that a close & highly engaging collaboration with the client is essential for a truly design-thinking approach to evolving the user experience of a digital product, whilst also meeting business objectives.
For any questions regarding this project or any of my other work, please do not hesitate to get in contact.
