Service Drive System

Transforming dealership service visits

Summary: Dealership service visits are a moment for potential vehicle upgrades, but opportunities are often missed due to fragmented workflows and lack of visibility. I designed a service drive dashboard that surfaces opportunities across the appointment lifecycle, and explored how AI-driven signals could support faster, more informed decision-making.

My role: Product Designer leading end-to-end design, including research, workflow definition, and high-fidelity execution in collaboration with product and engineering.

Problem

Dealership teams lacked a clear way to identify which service customers were strong acquisition candidates. Information was scattered across systems, and decisions were reactive, relying on customer cues rather than proactive insights. This led to missed opportunities and inconsistent workflows.

Solution

I designed a centralized dashboard structured around the service lifecycle to surface high-potential opportunities and guide team actions.







1 Research Methodologies

Interviews

interviews
1:1 user interviews with car buyers were conducted to understand upgrade intent, decision triggers, and service experience.

Workflow Analysis

Workflow analysis
A Workflow analysis of dealership service processes was performed to identify current behaviors, gaps, and missed acquisition opportunities.

AI Synthesis

AI synthesis
AI-assisted synthesis of qualitative data was used to quickly identify patterns, themes, and opportunity areas across interviews.



2 Research Insights

  • Decision-making is largely reactive Teams wait for explicit customer intent and there is no system in place to prompt users to sell their vehicle.
  • High-value signals (vehicle age, mileage, service frequency) exist but are underutilized While this data is available, it is not surfaced in a way that supports quick interpretation, requiring advisors to manually connect signals under time pressure.
  • Time constraints during service visits limit deep analysis Advisors must make quick decisions while managing multiple customers, leaving little time to review and interpret detailed data.

Interview participants had this to say about the service drive experience and their openness to selling:

“When I’m bringing my car in for service, I’m already thinking about how much it’s costing me. If someone made a good offer, I’d at least consider it.”

“I’m usually in a rush during service appointments. Unless someone brings it up, I’m not going to go out of my way to ask about trading in.”




Map the problem

Insights

Service advisors work in a fast-paced environment where their main focus is getting customers checked in and service issues handled quickly. Because they are managing multiple customers at once, they rely on quick judgment. As a result, potential opportunities to discuss selling or upgrading a vehicle are often missed.

User Map

This journey map shows the current service drive experience across pre-appointment, in-lane, and post-appointment stages. The goal is to identify key moments where opportunities are lost and where better support could improve decision-making.

user map
User Map



Decide and Storyboard

This storyboard shows how a service advisor might use the dashboard throughout a typical service visit. It highlights key moments where the system surfaces opportunities and supports conversations with the customer.

Storyboard
Storyboard



Wireframes

The following wireframes illustrate key parts of the service drive dashboard, focusing on how information is structured and surfaced across the experience. They explore different ways to prioritize opportunities, reduce cognitive load, and support quick decision-making in a fast-paced environment.

Note: These wireframes are adapted and recreated based on earlier project work to reflect the core concepts and workflows without using proprietary designs. As a result, high-fidelity prototypes are not included, with the focus instead placed on system thinking, structure, and interaction patterns.

wireframes
Wireframes



User Testing

To validate the proposed workflow, wireframes and prototypes were reviewed with product stakeholders and subject matter experts familiar with dealership service operations. The goal was to evaluate whether acquisition opportunities were surfaced at the right moments, assess the clarity of the information hierarchy, and identify areas where the workflow could better support service advisors in a fast-paced environment.

  1. 1. Participants responded positively to the three-stage workflow, which aligned with how service appointments are managed in practice.
  2. 2. Feedback indicated that opportunity signals needed additional context to help advisors quickly understand why a customer was being prioritized.
  3. Stakeholders identified opportunities to expand action recommendations and follow-up workflows in future iterations.



Future Iterations

During feedback sessions with stakeholders, several ideas were identified to further improve the experience and better support dealership workflows. While not included in the current designs, these suggestions highlight opportunities for future iterations and continued refinement of the system.:

  1. 1. Introduce a clearer opportunity scoring system to better prioritize customers
  2. 2. Add customizable filters and views based on dealership roles or preferences
  3. 3. Provide more context behind signals (e.g., why a customer is flagged)
  4. 4. Explore automated follow-up workflows (email/SMS outreach)
  5. 5. Integrate real-time notifications or alerts for high-value arrivals
  6. 6. Enable performance tracking to measure conversion from service to acquisition
  7. 7. Expand action recommendations with more tailored conversation prompts



Reflection

This project shifted my thinking from designing interfaces to designing decision-support systems. I learned how to structure complex workflows across time-based stages and began exploring how AI can enhance human decision-making. With each iteration of the design cycle, I intend to use the tools that I have learned to make the system better and better.

© 2020 by Joux Ligutti