2020
Improving Tesla
Elon Musk Tweets
"Order a Tesla online in 2 mins."
Over the course of 2 weeks my team set out to test the reality of this statement and discovered it's not exactly true, nor is speed the most important feature to Users while buying a car.
To improve the ordering process at tesla.com, my team utilized usability testing, interviews, C&C analysis, user personas and design studios. It still takes slightly longer than 2 minutes, but the outcome shows greater user confidence and efficiency.
Team
My Role: Project Manager. Individually designed checkout screens
Christina Ngo: Research Manager
Jeanie Son: Design Manager
Tools
Figma, Miro
Duration
12 days
Initial Usability Testing Takeaways
What's Important to Users?
What is actually most important to people when they are buying a car online? We conducted user interviews with folks who had recently bought a car or are currently shopping. Every person we interviewed expressed a feeling that the car buying process is lacking transparency.
Key Insights:
• Transparency throughout the process and in pricing
• Efficiency. No phone calls or pushy sales reps
• Confidence in getting a fair price, not necessarily lowest
• Users compared cars on multiple 3rd party sites
Competitive & Comparative Analysis Key Takeaways
With the knowledge that we needed to add a feature to compare models, which would also contribute to transparency and efficiency, our team completed a comprehensive C&C analysis. We focused on discovering how other companies empower their users to compare products and how we might provide more transparency.
Task Analysis
Feature Inventory
Pluses & Deltas
- How might we provide maximum transparency in pricing?
- How might we give the user confidence that they understand each Tesla model in order to choose the right one for them?
Meet Our Personas
Primary Persona
Secondary Persona
Design Studio
Once we had problems and personas in sight, our team held a design studio to brainstorm possible design solutions: lightning rounds of wireframe sketching and iterating to best solve for our key goals.
- Model comparison
- Detailed guidance for specs
- Upfront pricing
Hi-Fi Iterations
Prototype
Outcome
Tiny tweaks.
I had a blast working on this project with my team and I learned more about Teslas than I ever thought possible. I also enjoyed learning about the link between confidence and transparency and how both contribute to much higher conversion rates. As the designer of the checkout flow specifically, it reminded me of the importance of copy writing and seemingly tiny changes. Something as small as one additonal word to a button drastically changed usability testing.
Elon, if you are reading this, I am available for hire.
Outcome 2.0!
A little validation.
Since our case study has completed, Telsa has altered their website to include many of our findings.
