Rethinking car configuration

Stellantis · 2021Shipped

A mobile-first configurator, designed around the people buying their next car.

The configurator on mobile: Fiat, Jeep, RAM and Citroën

Role: Senior UX Designer, via Merkle
Timeline: About one year
Team: UX, UI, product and engineering
Tools: Figma · Hotjar

Overview

A better way to choose a car

Fiat’s configurator was a key source of leads, but the experience felt slow and difficult to use. Fiat briefed the agency to redesign it, from UX to UI.

I joined during the second prototype, after the previous UX designer left, and took ownership of usability testing, synthesis and recommendations. I started by studying the research and test results that already existed.

Research

Testing beyond the screen

We ran remote and in-person usability tests with people who were actually in the market for a car. Stellantis also asked us to include users aged 45 to 60, and the online platforms could not find enough of them.

So I recruited people from my own network and tested face to face. Watching people navigate in person showed friction points the remote tests had missed. I turned the results into a presentation for the client, with each problem and its proposed solution, and the mobile version was approved.

Some problems only appear when you sit next to the person.

Iteration

From mobile to desktop

With the UI designer, I adapted the approved mobile layout to desktop and tested it in three moderated rounds, iterating after each one. Every round targeted people who had recently bought a car or were about to.

Internal team
Mixed participants
External users

Illustrative process diagram

Outcome

Learning after launch

A few weeks after the new configurator went live, we set up Hotjar. I monitored user feedback every week and wrote reports for the project manager. Those reviews led to four feature improvements in two months.

The project started for Fiat and Jeep under FCA. When FCA and PSA merged into Stellantis in 2021, the configurator became the official tool of every Stellantis brand in Brazil. See it live on Fiat’s website ↗.

The product