GLOBAL NAVIGATION

OVERVIEW

The Ask: Redesign the global navigation.
Client: Mercedes-Benz 
Role: Senior Experience Designer
Key Activities: high fidelity wireframes, design workshop, usability testing 
Duration: September 2017 – March 2018 

COMPETITIVE AUDIT

I did a thorough competitive audit of global navigations inside the automotive industry, while gathering inspiration from those outside of auto. The audit showed that most OEM’s desktop sites were utilizing a larger content well, which allowed for larger, colorful images of the products. Meanwhile, on mobile, use of the entire screen of the device allowed for stylistic and branding elements, that mbusa was lacking.

DESIGN WORKSHOP

I led an all day design workshop with our clients, gathering their feedback on what they thought wasn’t working with the navigation and what they’d like to see. The creative team also presented our initial 3 design concepts. Our clients were excited to see such a diverse range of possibilities for the future of their website, but ultimately agreed to one concept to move forward with user testing.

USER TESTING

We conducted user testing across 4 different markets - New York, Miami, Los Angeles, and Atlanta - with 16 participants in total. While everyone was a luxury vehicle owner, we had a diverse range of ages (including a 74 year old man), occupations, and lifestyles. Using prototypes created in both sketch and InVision Studio (due to different pros and cons for desktop vs. mobile), participants were guided to interact with the navigation. We wanted to ensure that shoppers understood how to access the core content, and navigate its various interactions.

The designs were tested iteratively, and the in-page content was adjusted after each market.

As a long time New Yorker (who doesn’t own a car!), user testing opened my eyes to the way people in different parts of the country drive their cars. It helped me design for both finability and discoverability - users need to be able to find content that knows exists, and yet also discover information they haven’t known about previously.

KEY FINDINGS

For the overall navigation, the hamburger menu is definitely more familiar on mobile and testers typically grasped it instantly there, whereas caused some confusion on the desktop navigation. Our testers articulated a clear rationale for accessing content via a hamburger menu on mobile while expecting more immediate options to be available on desktop.

Almost every user was looking for a search bar - something that the clients had initially deprioritized. Our testing proved that while most people would initially start their search from a search engine, a native a search functionality was also necessary.

As for vehicles, our users appreciated the imagery of the products, and were able to grasp the complex nature of the Mercedes-Benz lineup rather well.