The team had identified a subset of their users were looking to discover cars without a clear idea of what they want. As such, Kickstand were brought in to design a tool to guide these users, within the existing frame work of the Car Expert website.

Before jumping into design, we took a step back and conducted benchmark usability testing on the CarExpert website and competitor car websites so that we might understand more about how people approach their search for a new car.

We made sure to talk to people who considered themselves knowledgeable about cars, as well as those who didn’t know much. We needed to ensure that we captured the needs of both types of user so as not to alienate the needs of CarExpert's highly engaged and faithful user base of car enthusiasts. We conducted facilitated, one-to-one usability testing designed to identify common problems people experience while searching for a car, both on Car Expert’s and their competitor’s websites.

Using these insights we then crafted an interactive Car Chooser tool whereby users could narrow their car search and be delivered recommendations based on their unique needs. In addition, we were asked to redesign their homepage to support different ways of searching for cars, or navigating their rich editorial content.

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