ISSIMI Online Auction
Overview
Research, design and build of an auction site for luxury supercars.
My role
Project Planner
UX/UI designer
User researcher
Workshop facilitator
UX/ UI Designer
Copywriter
Timeframe
Jul 2022 - Jan 2023
Client
ISSIMI
The challenge
Sellers of luxury supercars worth up to millions of Dollars based in California, offer a full white-glove service for buyers and sellers worldwide.
They identified the need for an auction functionality and re-design of their website to keep up to date with the market. They also wanted to be able to keep up with the increasing levels of demand they were getting.
Therefore, this project proved important to align business goals with user needs and create a balance between the two within the auction process, considering interactions between the buyers, sellers and ISSIMI.
Approach
Discover
The discovery phase consisted of multiple activities that fed into the decisions made about the website. Market and desk research was conducted and aligned with the user research insights.
Stakeholder workshop
The kick-off/ stakeholder workshop provided a base-level understanding of the client’s current challenges and needs. This helped paint a picture of their view of the project and better manage their expectations.
User research
I planned and conducted user interviews with customers, which included an additional activity to complete in their own time after the interview. This provided us with an outside perspective, buying/ selling behaviours, as well as challenges, needs motivations for online auctions.
Define
The define phase consisted of synthesising the insights, preparing them into an as-is journey map and presenting them back to the client. The journey map is show below:
Ideate
Ideation workshop
I created an ideation workshop based on the research insights and rephrased them into ‘how might we’ questions. We conducted this as an internal activity and then ran a follow-up session with the client to capture their thoughts and feedback on the same topics and contribute their own ideas.
Auction process mapping
The auction process can work in multiple ways, and we had to clearly define and align the steps involved. This meant lots of detailed mapping and discussions between designers, developers and the client.
Design
I began creating low-fidelity wireframes and slowly developed them into high-fidelity designs, responsive to 4 different breakpoints. This included designing the UI and component library to create consistency across all designs, working closely with developers to ensure feasibility and considering any technical constraints.
Deliver
Hand-off to developers meant detailed annotation and providing examples alongside the design, so it could be implemented and behave as expected.
Throughout design and delivery, I also presented our progress to the client at the end of each sprint, ensuring they were kept involved with the process.
Learnings
The client was keen on pushing design changes that were out of scope for the MVP. Therefore I learnt how to push back on these requests in a professional way, utilising evidence from research as a key focus, rather than letting personal opinion drive decisions.
It also allowed me to better prepare for our check-in/ demo sessions with the client and help me articulate my design decisions.