Content

Commercial services had three separate applications for our fleet customers, all offering nearly the same features. This caused confusion for our clients and led to high maintenance costs for us. Each product was built by different teams to serve small fleet businesses, resulting in a mix of free and paid options that overlapped.

Challenge

Inconsistent telematic services disrupted fleet operations, compromising fleet health and stalling growth with commercial customers. To transform platform engagement and open new upsell opportunities, we needed a scalable Information Architecture (IA) that centralizes access to GM’s full product suite, empowering customers to seamlessly explore, adopt, and engage with solutions tailored to their operational needs.

My role

As the Lead UX Designer for a new commercial platform with OnStar Business Solutions, I was appointed to lead the creation of a unified platform and information architecture that streamlines services, eliminates overlaps, and intelligently integrates the powerful capabilities of account management, insights, and operations into a scalable architecture. By designing a tailored navigation system, we secured 95% alignment across teams, with expected outcomes of a 10% increase in user penetration, an 80% reduction in redundant workflows, a 50% boost in efficiency, and $2M in annual savings.

Unfolding the journey

 

Confirmation 

In collaboration with Lextant, Escalent, and the OnStar business strategy, we conducted research to de-risk our assumptions and uncovered two key insights:

a) Customers using multiple tools—saw a 35% drop in efficiency.

b) 95% of users requested a simple yet intelligent tool to streamline operations, vehicle health, and driver safety.

With those key learnings in mind, I developed a Jobs-to-be-Done (JTBD) framework, ensuring the structure for unification was crafted accordingly.

 

Research insights

 

Information architecture

Iterations – Nav patterns

Stress testing

Actions:
After conducting 5-7 stress-testing scenarios with 5 designers, we decided to simplify the interface by reducing the need for frequent view switching and removing workflow complexities.

Systematization

Then, I focused on developing design approaches to evaluate and refine three key concepts for unifying experiences and capabilities for commercial clients. Collaborating with other designers, we merged the best ideas into a final framework for intuitive navigation and information architecture.

 

 

Leveraging best practices, I prioritized intelligent search capabilities to give users control over their navigation and enhance the overall user experience. I suggested features like recent searches, type filtering, auto-complete, error tolerance, personalized results, and faceted search to make the system more intuitive and improve discoverability and accessibility for all users.

Completion

To ensure a smooth handoff and close the loop, I dedicated significant time to collaborating with the product and engineering teams. My team and I created detailed style and interaction guides to clearly communicate the final designs and interactions, ensuring the navigation was responsive across different screen sizes. This approach not only kept the team supported and aligned but also led to the successful delivery of high-quality solutions we could all be proud of.