1. Overview
  2. Reflection

My Role

Product Designer

Teammates

Peer Designers
Developers
Project Managers
Researchers
Marketing, Legal

Tools

Adobe XD
Sketch
Zepline
Figma

Time & Deliverables

Sep 2020 - Jun 2021

Overview

Project One - Advisor

What's Advisor

Advisor platform is an internal customer service tool (a web application), where GM Advisors (aka customer service agents) will assist customers to purchase GM products and update subscription services. It's a core e-commerce customer service tool that increases customer retention rate and provides guidance to Advisors.

For example, when a GM customer calls in and says, "I want to cancel my subscription to the Safety and Security services". The agent can use the platform to find ways to save the customer from canceling - maybe by offering a discount that's recommended by our algorithm, or by downgrading the plan after referring to the customer's vehicle information.

We initiated this project because, without this new platform, Advisors need to jump between a few platforms and transfer calls to finish a customer's request. It stopped GM from best assistant customer promptly and GM is losing potential revenue because of the low retention rate.

advisor mockup

What's My Work

My design work relates to dashboard design, information architecture, e-commerce shopping experience, and subscription management. It's a project where I am heavily involved in stakeholder meetings, validating business requirements, mapping user journeys, wireframing, and prototyping. I work with PMs, Devs, Design System team, marketing, and legal team.

Project Two - OnStar

What's OnStar

GM OnStar program offers a wide range of assistant services to customers, such as Connected Vehicles, Safety and Security, and Emergency Services, etc. I'm mainly working on a mobile app called Guardian that offers customers safety services in any vehicle.

What's My Work

I mainly work on wireframing and prototyping its mobile app with a team of 4 designers. I also work with UX researchers on usability testing and validating our assumptions.

OnStar mockup

Due to NDA, I can’t share the case study publicly. Feel free to reach out to learn more.

Reflections

Removing distractions when presenting

It's worth some extra time to discover and remove distractions so that the meetings won't derail. For example, when designing Advisor, to reflect how it works in context, my wires need to fill in real content, not too much lorim ipsm text. I need to perfectly consider all scenarios and illustrate it with wires. In such a way, our stakeholders can involve in the right discussion and keep the project moving.

Pushing for effective remote collaboration

When I first joined Advisor project, we were using Adobe XD and Sketch. There's no real-time collaboration. We sync design files and libraries via email. Fortunately, our leaders had pushed for Figma and we were at the phase of testing Figma in small teams. As I had previous experience using Figma, I convinced my team of three to try out Figma. I helped them to transfer files, and lead them onboard quickly. It dramatically improved our collaboration later on. It was great to take some extra effort to help on project management, which in return made my day-to-day design work much easier.

to-figma.png

Don't be afraid to take the lead

When I first joined GM, I thought as a new hire in a structured team, I should only do the work that's given to me, and seniors will take care of leading the project. Soon I realized my eyes for detail and strong execution can help the team to move more synchronously. I started to take the lead to certain extent. I helped to sync sprint work with the business team, uploaded everyone's work as a whole deliverable, and caught pieces that we missed. It turned out my team really appreciated it. They didn't think I was stepping over the boundary.

Here's one concrete example. Before we had Figma approved company-wise, business team and design team both had different concerns of what format we should follow when submitting the final deliverables. Designers didn't want to take another 3 weeks doing manual documentation in Word, and business team wanted to have a detailed annotation of all UX flows and wires. I took initiative to explore some tools on my own, and found some potential solutions. I met with business lead and design lead to discuss solutions I found, and we reached to a good middle point where designers didn't need to take extra effort organizing Word document, and business team could understand all designs.

Current: General Motors
Next: Ava
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