Seen at Auction

Desktop Software Design

My team's objective was to design a solution to help used car dealers identify vehicles that were already listed at auctions for a Cox Automotive product before they were listed on Upside Direct, a new auction service that guarantees a sale. Without a notification that a car was being sold elsewhere, a car dealer might sell the same car twice causing a terrible experience for both the purchasers and the seller.

Project Duration: June 2022-October 2022
Role: UX Designer, UI Designer.
Tools Used: Figma, Mural, Sharepoint

The Problem

Used car dealers wanted to receive an Upside Minimum offer for vehicles already listed at other auctions and needed to be notified of auction status before listing on Upside so that they could sell their vehicles only one time for the best price.

The Solution

To create an experience that would allow users to receive an Upside Minimum offer on vehicles already listed at other auctions and then allow for them to be delisted before posting on the Upside Direct auction.

The Impact

This design allowed dealers to see an Upside Minimum price for their vehicles so they could decide whether to delist from another auction and potentially earn more money. The solution allowed for dealers to post to Upside Direct and delist from other Manheim auctions in a single click saving dealers time. It also prevented them from selling the same care on multiple auctions sites which is a major issue for the purchaser who could arrive at a location expecting to pick up a vehicle that had already been sold. Bad experiences like these often turn buyers away from using the auction sites again, according to Cox Automotive research.

The Research

Weekly interview sessions with performance managers and interviews with users revealed that dealers wanted to receive an Upside Minimum price for their vehicles that were already at other auctions so they could decide if they should post the vehicles elsewhere. Upside Minimum is an alternative in which the dealer can assess their vehicle and be guaranteed to receive a minimum price for their car at auction. The minimum is just the lowest price the dealer receives for the car. When bids are more than the Upside Minimum, 90 percent of the proceeds are passed on to the dealer. Additional research was performed to determine if the system was capable of searching for vehicles by VIN to see their auction status. Seeing into auction status was also a need brought up in research that led to the formation of the Wholesale Hub in V-Auto, prior to Upside's existence. I also did some research to see how other products identify vehicles at auctions in other user interfaces such as Stockwave.

I had access to previous interview sessions and synthesis which informed my design decisions

Complex flows detailed how the systems worked together in their current state.

I made this user flow diagram to show how the user interacts with the program.

The User

Upside Direct car wholesalers are a small number of used car dealers in target markets that subscribe to V-Auto's Provision or ProfitTime Software and use KBB Instant Cash Offer to generate leads. Upside Direct is used to dispose of cars. Upside Direct was designed so that dealers would have a known minimum value for wholesale vehicles at the time of acquisition and removes the fear surrounding buying a trade. Dealers use the KBB ICO process at the time of car trade-in to obtain an Upside Minimum or conduct an ICO on aged inventory for the offer. Alternatively, they may also request an inspection and then receive an offer for the vehicle before listing it on Upside Direct. Users range from small businesses to large enterprise dealerships.

Ideation

Product managers and I brainstormed ways to alert dealers of vehicles at other auctions without significantly changing the user experience and interface that users were accustomed to. This change actually involved several different screens throughout the Upside Direct experience from the listing grid, to the expanded vehicle view and what we call the Send to Upside Wizard. Product owners and managers participated in a design session where we all drew or plotted possible changes and we voted for the features we liked the best.

Early Wireframes/Mocks

The Wizard, detailed vehicle page and grid went through multiple iterations and design reviews with stakeholders and other UX Designers within Cox Automotive who work on related products.

Changes included marking cars with labels, using text decoration on the grid and eventually adding an alert to every car already listed at another auction and what action the send function would take. In some cases, the underlying service was not able to deactivate the listing and so we told users who to contact or what steps to take next before listing the vehicles to the Upside auction.

Final Product

The Wizard, detailed vehicle page and grid updates were released to a few dealer sites and monitored for issues before it was rolled out to all users in December 2022. The improved design removed several steps in the listing process. Dealers would normally have to log in to another website to delist their vehicles from one auction before sending it to Upside. While prototypes allowed us to see how the system could work, one issue arose after the new flow's release in the way the system categorized vehicles.

View Flow

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