Automotive
Mapping an entire automotive ecosystem before a single dollar was committed.
The stakes
New executive leadership was about to commit to a multi-year digital transformation program, without a real, shared understanding of the people the program was supposed to serve.
The challenge
Some motorists were showing up at AutoCare centers expecting a parts store. They recognized the name but had no idea it meant repair services. That was just one symptom of a larger problem: three customer groups (motorists, repair shops, and parts stores) all touched the same supply chain, and nobody had studied them together. New leadership had a major technology transformation on the table. Before committing to it, they needed to know whether they were solving the right problems.
What I did
Led a nine-month, three-phase ecosystem research program across motorists, repair shops, and parts stores — three groups who'd never been studied together despite sharing the same supply chain
Ran concept testing on future-state digital concepts with motorists in phase one, to understand not just where the experience was breaking down today but which directions would actually resonate — before the transformation team committed to a direction
Conducted 14+ contextual inquiries across 3 states, including ride-alongs with delivery drivers and shop-floor interviews with technicians, to capture how the experience actually worked rather than how teams assumed it did
Synthesized all three customer journeys into a single deliverable, a Journey Mesh, giving executives a shared view of the customer for the first time and a foundation for the transformation program that followed
From the project
What changed
From three fragmented views to one shared customer picture.
Leadership moved from three fragmented, team-specific views of the customer to one aligned picture, built on real time spent in trucks and on shop floors, not just survey data. The Journey Mesh became the foundation the transformation program was built on. Executive stakeholders across divisions who had never had a shared reference point were, for the first time, working from one. The Journey Mesh is still in use.
Having you handle research is a bit like pressing the easy button. We got what we needed and I didn't really need to worry about the how.
Sr. Director of Technology
“What sets Matt apart is his ability to bring people into the customer's perspective in a way that actually sticks. He digs until he finds the underlying insight that can genuinely shift a project's direction, and more often than not, it does.”
UX Design & Research Lead, B2B Ecommerce
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