The Appraisal Lane

The Appraisal Lane

Automotive — B2C & B2B Software

Automotive — B2C & B2B Software

Sell your car simply. Get a guaranteed offer on your car in 30 minutes or less.

Sell your car simply. Get a guaranteed offer on your car in 30 minutes or less.

Overview

Overview

The Appraisal Lane is a third-party vehicle appraisal service. Unlike other appraisal tools, The Appraisal Lane backs all their appraisals with an offer to buy. This process involves real appraisers standing by to give you an exact offer on your vehicle. Take your appraisal to one of The Appraisal Lane's partner dealerships to redeem for trade-in value or cash. 

My job was to redesign the user experience of The Appraisal Lane's consumer-facing products for iOS, Android, and Web day one of my hire date. This led to the creation of a design system that I worked on with another designer. Together we created reusable components in Sketch and transferred them to InVisions' DSM. You can view the TAL Design system I worked on with Chirs Bendana by clicking on the link below. 

View the TAL Design System

Here are links to the B2C products I led the design of for The Appraisal Lane. You can also keep scrolling for the case study that covers:

• Consumer Product Goals
• Consumer Personas
• Before & After Redesign
• Consumer Product Walkthrough
• Design Metrics
• UX Research
• Driving Traffic

The Appraisal Lane is a third-party vehicle appraisal service. Unlike other appraisal tools, The Appraisal Lane backs all their appraisals with an offer to buy. This process involves real appraisers standing by to give you an exact offer on your vehicle. Take your appraisal to one of The Appraisal Lane's partner dealerships to redeem for trade-in value or cash. 

My job was to redesign the user experience of The Appraisal Lane's consumer-facing products for iOS, Android, and Web day one of my hire date. This led to the creation of a design system that I worked on with another designer. Together we created reusable components in Sketch and transferred them to InVisions' DSM. You can view the TAL Design system I worked on with Chirs Bendana by clicking on the link below. 

View the TAL Design System

Here are links to the B2C products I led the design of for The Appraisal Lane. You can also keep scrolling for the case study that covers:

• Consumer Product Goals
• Consumer Personas
• Before & After Redesign
• Consumer Product Walkthrough
• Design Metrics
• UX Research
• Driving Traffic

Competitors

Competitors

Kelly Blue Book
TrueCar
Auto Nation
Carvana

Kelly Blue Book
TrueCar
Auto Nation
Carvana

My Role

My Role

UX Design
UX Research

UX Design
UX Research

How I helped establish a design process and user-centered design at The Appraisal Lane

How I helped establish a design process and user-centered design at The Appraisal Lane

First 90 Days: I learned about the business and the current process. During this time, I Introduced kumbaya (design review) meetings to be held with the Product Team. This included Product Owners and Designers. I also introduce user testing of our products and how important it was for us to be designing our products alongside the users of them. Design metrics we're also established in collaboration with the other Product Designer.

Product Team size: 2 Designers, 2 Product Owners

6 Months: Kumbayas started to fail and we discovered that it was not scalable because we weren't including developers in these meetings which produced more back and forth and Jira ticket creation.

Product Team Size: 2 Designers, 2 Product Owners, 1 Data Scientist

9 Months: Design Sprints were introduced after a process improvement workshop held with the Product Team, VP of Product, and VP of Engineering. We also set up Guilds (small teams which included different members across our organization), which we borrowed from the Developer's Sprint process that they adopted from Spotify's Agile Team Organization. We set up a Metrics Guild and User Testing Guild. The Metrics Guild included Product Design, Marketing, and members of our Data Science Team with meetings held every Wednesday at 10:30 AM. The User Testing Guild contained Product Design and Marketing with meetings held every Wednesday at 1:00 PM. Reports were sent out by email, which includes the CTO, VP of Engineering, VP of Product, and Product Team.

Product Team Size: 2 Designers, 2 Product Owners, 1 Data Scientist

12 Months: Introduction of TAL Design System. I was tasked with the redesign of TAL’s consumer-facing products for iOS, Android, and Web day one of my hire date. A TAL Tech Talk was given on the 18th of April by another designer and I. We worked together on creating reusable components in Sketch and transferred them to InVisions’ DSM. During the talk, we discussed our current problems and how we could improve the process and also demonstrated how DSM worked using our consumer-facing product components. We also proposed that the developers could remain in GitHub and how they could transfer data from the DSM through JSON and XML.

Product Team Size: 2 Designers, 3 Product Owners, 1 Data Scientist

First 90 Days: I learned about the business and the current process. During this time, I Introduced kumbaya (design review) meetings to be held with the Product Team. This included Product Owners and Designers. I also introduce user testing of our products and how important it was for us to be designing our products alongside the users of them. Design metrics we're also established in collaboration with the other Product Designer.

Product Team size: 2 Designers, 2 Product Owners

6 Months: Kumbayas started to fail and we discovered that it was not scalable because we weren't including developers in these meetings which produced more back and forth and Jira ticket creation.

Product Team Size: 2 Designers, 2 Product Owners, 1 Data Scientist

9 Months: Design Sprints were introduced after a process improvement workshop held with the Product Team, VP of Product, and VP of Engineering. We also set up Guilds (small teams which included different members across our organization), which we borrowed from the Developer's Sprint process that they adopted from Spotify's Agile Team Organization. We set up a Metrics Guild and User Testing Guild. The Metrics Guild included Product Design, Marketing, and members of our Data Science Team with meetings held every Wednesday at 10:30 AM. The User Testing Guild contained Product Design and Marketing with meetings held every Wednesday at 1:00 PM. Reports were sent out by email, which includes the CTO, VP of Engineering, VP of Product, and Product Team.

Product Team Size: 2 Designers, 2 Product Owners, 1 Data Scientist

12 Months: Introduction of TAL Design System. I was tasked with the redesign of TAL’s consumer-facing products for iOS, Android, and Web day one of my hire date. A TAL Tech Talk was given on the 18th of April by another designer and I. We worked together on creating reusable components in Sketch and transferred them to InVisions’ DSM. During the talk, we discussed our current problems and how we could improve the process and also demonstrated how DSM worked using our consumer-facing product components. We also proposed that the developers could remain in GitHub and how they could transfer data from the DSM through JSON and XML.

Product Team Size: 2 Designers, 3 Product Owners, 1 Data Scientist

My challenges were learning about The Appraisal Lane's 4 pieces of software and how they interact with each part of the business. I worked with an engineering team (30+) based in Uruguay, Montevideo, who were accustomed to working with one designer, the VP of Product. Lastly, educating team members and business stakeholders on the benefits of a design process, user-centered design, and setting up design metrics to measure the impact of design.

My challenges were learning about The Appraisal Lane's 4 pieces of software and how they interact with each part of the business. I worked with an engineering team (30+) based in Uruguay, Montevideo, who were accustomed to working with one designer, the VP of Product. Lastly, educating team members and business stakeholders on the benefits of a design process, user-centered design, and setting up design metrics to measure the impact of design.

The Appraisal Lane's consumer personas are backed by real data. The Appraisal Lane has appraised 600K+ vehicles, given out $2.3B+ in total offers, and averages 8.8K monthly appraisals. Personas are used during stakeholder meetings, sales calls, support calls, and marketing targeted ad campaigns. As more data is collected, these personas will go through another round of updates.

The Appraisal Lane's consumer personas are backed by real data. The Appraisal Lane has appraised 600K+ vehicles, given out $2.3B+ in total offers, and averages 8.8K monthly appraisals. Personas are used during stakeholder meetings, sales calls, support calls, and marketing targeted ad campaigns. As more data is collected, these personas will go through another round of updates.

Onboarding starts by explaining how the process works from creating your appraisal, connecting with a live team of automotive experts, receiving an offer on your vehicle, and redeeming at one of The Appraisal Lane's 200+ partnered dealerships.

If a consumer came from a partnered dealership website, they would have received a code from The Appraisal Lane's plugin. Only partner dealerships subscribed to the retail product would receive this plugin. The goal was for dealers to drive traffic to the consumer app and keep the consumer tied to that dealership.

Onboarding starts by explaining how the process works from creating your appraisal, connecting with a live team of automotive experts, receiving an offer on your vehicle, and redeeming at one of The Appraisal Lane's 200+ partnered dealerships.

If a consumer came from a partnered dealership website, they would have received a code from The Appraisal Lane's plugin. Only partner dealerships subscribed to the retail product would receive this plugin. The goal was for dealers to drive traffic to the consumer app and keep the consumer tied to that dealership.

A consumer is asked to enter their vehicle's license plate or VIN, which gives appraisers visibility to a consumer vehicle history report (Carfax & Auto Check). Once a consumer's vehicle is decoded the year, make, and model of that vehicle is pulled up, and the consumer can complete the basic info section. The entire process is a dynamic creation process (DCP), and the questions will adjust based on the consumer's answers.

A consumer is asked to enter their vehicle's license plate or VIN, which gives appraisers visibility to a consumer vehicle history report (Carfax & Auto Check). Once a consumer's vehicle is decoded the year, make, and model of that vehicle is pulled up, and the consumer can complete the basic info section. The entire process is a dynamic creation process (DCP), and the questions will adjust based on the consumer's answers.

Once a consumer completes the basic info section, they are asked to upload photos of their vehicle. The photo section is one of the most critical parts of the consumer's journey as the quality of the pictures will dictate the offer the appraisers can place on the vehicle. If an appraiser needs more info or a photo, they will ask a consumer in chat before they place an offer on the vehicle after a consumer completes their submission.

Once a consumer completes the basic info section, they are asked to upload photos of their vehicle. The photo section is one of the most critical parts of the consumer's journey as the quality of the pictures will dictate the offer the appraisers can place on the vehicle. If an appraiser needs more info or a photo, they will ask a consumer in chat before they place an offer on the vehicle after a consumer completes their submission.

Condition is the final section in the DCP. The consumers asked questions about how the vehicle runs, any transmission issues, paint issues, the exterior condition, etc. Some questions like "Are there any issues with the exterior condition?" will prompt the consumer to attach a note or photo if the consumer selects yes.

Condition is the final section in the DCP. The consumers asked questions about how the vehicle runs, any transmission issues, paint issues, the exterior condition, etc. Some questions like "Are there any issues with the exterior condition?" will prompt the consumer to attach a note or photo if the consumer selects yes.

When a consumer submits their vehicle, the appraisal starts once an appraiser opens the submission. Notification is sent to the consumer when their appraisal has begun, and an appraiser will reach out to a consumer in chat if they have any questions about their vehicle.

When a consumer submits their vehicle, the appraisal starts once an appraiser opens the submission. Notification is sent to the consumer when their appraisal has begun, and an appraiser will reach out to a consumer in chat if they have any questions about their vehicle.

Auto Select VIN: After reviewing our consumer feedback, we noticed a trend. Consumers needed help figuring out what options were standard on their vehicles. So, we decide to introduce the autoselect feature. Once a consumer entered their vehicle's VIN, we were able to auto-select questions for them. This feature led to an increase in consumer appraisals and help with our goal of 100+ appraisals a week.

Auto Select VIN: After reviewing our consumer feedback, we noticed a trend. Consumers needed help figuring out what options were standard on their vehicles. So, we decide to introduce the autoselect feature. Once a consumer entered their vehicle's VIN, we were able to auto-select questions for them. This feature led to an increase in consumer appraisals and help with our goal of 100+ appraisals a week.