Enabling project teams to build a shared empathy with purchase journeys and improve collaboration

AutoScout24 Customer Journey Expo - Munich, 2014

The problem

Solving for alignment and scattered data across project teams

AutoScout24 is an online marketplace for new and used cars within Europe. Like most large companies, they have numerous project teams all striving to improve their service offering. It became evident that these teams were often quite isolated from each other, but still trying to solve similar problems. In an effort to increase company-wide alignment, create a central data source, and identify service for underutilized purchase journeys the UX team stepped forward to tackle the problem. I decided to curate a visual expo of user journeys based on contextual interview data.

My ROLE

By conducting contextual interviews in the homes of users, I enabled our team to dive deeply into the complex and personal decision making process of buying a car

Taking our very tight schedule into consideration, I designed the research plan and testing materials, coordinated recruitment, and helped moderate contextual testing sessions. In order to identify moments that matter and pinpoint key design insights, I led workshops to systematically and rigorously synthesize the vast amount of qualitative data.

Data synthesis

Relying heavily on Design Thinking methodologies to synthesis the vast amounts of qualitative data

I led a series of workshops in order for the team to swim through the vast amounts of qualitative data and pinpoint the moments that mattered. Utilizing tools such as: framework development, empathy mapping to create personas, digital trend research, and competitor reviews we were able to create the ideal future state journey.

Designing communication

A physical expo to help teams build shared empathy

Recognizing the 'Powerpoint-look once and forget' culture, I wanted to communicate our ideal state at a visceral immersive level. In a matter of a week and a half- we built an interactive expo that physically led the internal teams through the customer journey: the Customer Empath War Room was born.

From initial triggers to the final acquire phase, we showcased the needs and pains gathered through our contextual interviews in order to spark empathy and ideation. Complete with a brainstorming/ meeting area, teams from across all domains were able to experience a holistic empathetic journey of their end-users.

In the month that followed, over 10 multi-disciplinary task forces self-assembled to start solving the user pain points that were highlighted throughout our journey.