Challenge: Ford Motor Company wanted to transition their hundred + page Middle East Accessory Brochures into a digital direct eCommerce ordering system. The solutions would require location authentication in the Middle East and Africa markets and need to include available legacy vehicle accessories. Pricing would automatically calculate and adjust based on region, GPS/IP location and real-time international currency standards and rates.

Working with remote international stake holders, regional, technical and operational standards were defined. Usability and mobile access was a primary consideration and an iterative, agile, mobile first approach was on whiteboard highlighting the primary user requirements, key user and market needs, usability gap and strategy. Simplifying the usability across multiple international standards of use with technical, geographic and cultural considerations was a primary content driver. Primary strategic concerns were adoption to the new process and required targeted launch strategies.

Market qualitative / quantitative and A/B testing were initiated quickly against know US and CAN analytical data and functionality. Low-fidelity wireframes were designed based on the research outcomes and recommendations before moving to high-fidelity UX Designs. The site was a blank slate so protype iterations that supported the site goals and agressive timeline were quickly developed focusing on usability within the Middle East region. The research showed a high percentage of smart phone usage and connectivity challenges in some areas. Usability study and card sorting was initiated to identify and create the information architecture matching user expectations. Beta  prototype was developed and tested to ensure practical user solutions and align with lower speed connections.

Internal: Beta testing and Proof of concept tracking development of component based design system, Saas implemenation was initiated to establish new benchmark for speed to market.

Team + Ways of Working:

• Daily ideation and requirements gathering from feature demos
• Validating Assumptions (exploring the whys)
• Leveraging support and sales insights
• Technical considerations (limitations + Design System Guidance)
• Content Strategy + Revisions
• Accessibility A11y Standards
• Design System and Saas CSS Development was utilized to curtail regional network/data constraints
  

UX/UI + HCD:
Changing Behavior: HCD practices were utilized as it related to cultural, economic, and geopolitical user viewpoints and preferences. Replacing a historic sales methodology with digital direct migration and consideration requires analysis of users at a deeper level. This is especially relevant when adapting US/CAN user analytics, heatmapping and usability findings —  this comparative analysis offered great insight on what works and doesn't work across global regions. UX/UI nuances and a desire to unifiy expereicnes across deployed regions was key to success. Continually putting users at the center of the process, I managed, advocated and facilitated user-centric methodologies supporting project outcomes and strategic goals. This resulted in high adoption rate, a highly-successful functional solutions adding to user engagement, high sales conversions, improvements across the deployed platform and increased speed to market.

Processes Used:

• Sales Process Analysis
• Competitive Analysis
• Stake Holder and Dealer Interviews
• Experience Architecture
• Site Maps + User Flows
• Journey Mapping
• Lo-Fidelity Wireframes
• Product Features Analysis
• UI / Component Design System
  
  

Considerations + Outcomes:

• Lowest Common Denominator: The amount of required data and interactive assets coupled with the need to develop solutions to the least common denominator drove the uniquely user centered solutions. UX Design needed to consider geological nuances and streamline across the product solution to unify and simplify the CMS build and delivery while remaining scalable across regional needs.
• Custom Content Management System (CMS): A custom CMS was built using SCSS responsive design framework and custom theme aligning across our Ford design system. This CMS product platform offers responsive, fast updates in the future and a management tools that could be easily maintained in-house and within the global regional markets.
• Optimization Testing: Imperative that the designs be tested and built for worse case wi-fi access and slow loading speeds.
• Digital Design System: Aligning with Ford branding standards an extension of the Ford Design System was utilized as a platform for the regional deployment (focus on scalability for future international markets needs).

Results:

FIRSTS:

• First launch of its kind in the Middle East + Africa Regions
• First Regional Direct Digital Sales through eCommerce (replacing paper/brochure/catalogue ordering
• First myfordaccessory.com Deployment in 16 supported countries
• First deployment with new UI framework and SCSS - POC/Beta (proving increased Speed to Market)

The result allowed UX design to mature within the business segment, reduced costs and successfully shifted project funding from long-standing traditional to digital first solutions.

This layed the groundwork for a series of products to be launched with this as a successful benchmark with high regional adoption rates showing successful progression from traditional to direct digital sales.

Ultimately the site launch and and market acceptance was a huge success resulting in a 119% increase in digital direct sales revenue, 52% increase in traffic, 208% increase in completed orders. All on budget, ahead of schedule and welcomely adopted as the digital replacement to the legacy catalogue system.

Additional:

Direct PMs and clients were relatively unfamiliar to agile processes and iterative design. This project provided an opportunity to train out and up to product stake-holders and provide a great deal of process realted strategy (internally, too). The timing was quick and melding processes that 'worked' for the project management team aligning with agile methodologies provided pre- and post-launch gap analysis, retrospectives and areas for improvement as it related to agile processes and ways-of-working. My leadership adapting to divergent UX design maturity within team dynamics provides areas that I continually hone as a method for putting users at the center research, UX design process and design. My teaching background allows me to remain empathatic and adaptable to specalized team needs and fill project management gaps to bring the best solutions to market. This team landscape added some additional focus on knowlege sharing in the following focus areas:

• Workshop Facilitation
• Lean Agile Methodology
• Horizontal UX - Speed to Market
• Taxonomy and Asset Management Solutions
• Digial First Planning, Scaling and Design
• Technical Platform Analysis and Recommendations
• UI Design Framework Analysis + SCSS Scalable Design
• Regional Translation Design Considerations
• Accessibilty, Compliance and QA Testing Solutions