Overview

mobile.de is Germany's largest online vehicle marketplace. Users can search for a second hand car and contact the sellers of the cars they are interested in. Users have the option to “park” (save / favorite) a car they like, to “Parkplatz” (“Car Park”: section for saved cars / favorites). Comparing is one of the main Jobs-to-be-Done (JTBD) on mobile.de.

In 2024, we wanted to better understand how users compare cars while searching for one, holistically across the whole search journey, and specifically on the Car Park (favorites).

Role & Team

I was the Product Designer of the Save Space team which belonged to the Finding Squad. The team consisted of a product manager, two Android developers, two iOS developers, two Front-End developers, a backend developer and a Tech Lead.

Timeline

Jan 2024 - Mar 2024

My Contribution

As we didn’t have a dedicated UX researcher, I owned all areas of the study, with short catch ups with our newly hired UX Research Lead.

• Created the goals with my PM & prepared the interview script

• Set up the test & recruited participants on Rapid User Testing tool

• Ran the sessions

• Synthesised & analysed the insights

• Shared insights  & facilitated ideation session with stakeholders

• Created solutions based on the insights and ideas

Participant Screening

We recruited 5 participants on desktop and 5 on Android to explore the differences and similarities in the comparison experience between the platforms. The participants were selected based on the following criteria:

• Recently bought a car (within the last 4 months or less) or looking for a car to buy right now, with a specific make and model in mind.

• Recently looked for car offers online (within the last 4 months or less) or are currently looking for car offers online on platforms such as mobile.de, AutoScout24, Kleinanzeigen.

• Speak fluent English and German, can conduct the interview in English.

Structure of the Study

The study was online and moderated by me using a tool called Rapid User Tests. It was structured to include a user interview and usability test. 

1. User Interviews
Why?
To understand which criteria (like vehicle details, dealer info, payment options like leasing or online buying etc) are most relevant while searching for a vehicle and why.

How?
By asking users how they usually find a vehicle they like and contact the seller.

2. Usability Test
Why?
To understand how users compare: what is helping them and what makes it hard for them to compare while searching on mobile.de and specifically on the Car Park.

How?
By setting a scenario and observing users to carry out specific tasks while talking out loud.

Analysis Process

1. Note Taking

To document the insights, I used notes on Miro, using color code for the sticky notes (red: negative observation/pain points, green: positive observation/user driver, yellow: neutral observation, blue: ideas/suggestions from the participant). Notes were tagged according to the participant order (P1, P2, P3..).

I invited the product manager and developers of my team to join the research sessions. Everyone who joined took notes using sticky notes, following the guideline I developed in collaboration with the UX Research Lead. This helped the team members to gain a deep understanding of the user problems.

2. Mapping the Pain Points

I mapped the pain points, user drivers, neutral observations and ideas per participant, per each step of the search journey, like the vehicle info step and the Car Park (“Parkplatz” in German, favorites) step.

We now had pain points and drivers mapped per each step per participant, across the whole search journey: from the Homepage to detailed search, search results page, vehicle info page, Car Park, and finally, the comparison page.

I did this for each participant on both platforms, desktop and Android.

3. Clustering Insights

I clustered all pain points and drivers of all the 5 participants, per each step of the search journey, like the vehicle info step and the Car Park (parkplatz) step, per platform.

With all the pain points and user drivers clustered from all participants per each step, I proceeded to map them to a 4 quadrant matrix, where we can visually clearly see the "User pains” (red), “User drivers” (green),” Ideas & suggestions by users” (blue) and “Neutral observation / feedback” (yellow).

Below, the matrix for the comparing experience on the Car Park (parkplatz) step on desktop can be seen.

With all the insights clustered together, we now had a matrix of main user pain points and drivers at each step of the search journey: Homepage, detailed search, search results page, vehicle info page, Car Park and comparison feature page, for both desktop and Android.

Key Insights

After I completed the analysis , I summarised the key findings of each step per platform and shared these key insights with the stakeholders of the relevant teams who owned these artefacts. The findings between desktop and Android were mostly similar.

Search Results Page - Pain Points

• Price rating tag is helpful for the users to compare, however how it is calculated is not clear.

• Sorting options help to compare the results, however the default value of "Standard sorting" is unclear.

• Not being able to see extra equipment from this view makes the comparison harder.

Vehicle Info Page - Pain Points

• Missing data about the car around the description is the key pain point while comparing.

• Forgetting which equipment was included in the page previously looked included makes it hard to compare.

• "Vehicle Description by dealer" section is hard to read and negatively impacts the comparison experience.

Car Park - Pain Points

• The absence of tech specs (mileage, horsepower, etc.) on the parked vehicle makes comparison difficult, as users have to open the vehicle info page to see them.

• Price rating tag is helpful for the users to compare, however how it is calculated is not clear.

• “Compare” checkbox is not seen by most users and they don’t know this functionality exists.

Comparison Page - Pain Points

• Most users find it difficult to spot the differences of the compared data at a glance. Some expect visual cues to highlight those differences.

• The absence of data values and the resulting empty cells make it difficult to compare information.

• Users find it hard to understand the current order of the data on this page and expect to see a different order.

Ideation

After sharing the insights I facilitated two ideation sessions with my team on our artefact Car Park and with the stakeholders on the others. Together, we brainstormed ways to address the pain points identified during the research.

The challenge we tackled was: “How might we enhance comparison across key steps of the search journey (Search Results page, Vehicle Info page, Car Park page, etc.)?” After gathering all the ideas, we used dot-voting to prioritise the ones we believed have the highest potential impact in solving the pain points.

Next Steps

• The research insights and ideas from the ideation session were used to build a backlog for my team, with the most dot-voted ones prioritised.

• We ran two experiments from these ideas already, to improve the comparing experience on the Car Park.

• Upcoming experiments are prioritised and will be run as possible iterations based on the results of the previous experiments.