Bobcat - User Research Success Story

The Industry

Machinery

Project Timeline

5 Months

Our services

Concept design

Our Deliverables

Reasearch, Personas, Journey Maps, Wireframes

Project Team

Kait
UX Researcher & Designer

Matt
UX Researcher & Designer

Techmates Group
Consulting Partner

Bobcat built a business by breaking down barriers.

Hundreds of machines and equipment are seen, sold, or serviced at Bobcat dealerships everyday.

The Problem

But too much information across too many applications created new obstacles.

After interviewing over 20 dealers, we uncovered three key problems in their internal applications and workflows.

Disjointed experience.
A lack of integration across apps used to accomplish various jobs created a segmented experience.

Minimal recognition.
Users were required to remember work-arounds in order to retrieve key information.

Inconsistent conventions.
Many apps followed the Bobcat brand, but few followed the same UI interactions and conventions

Our Solution

The right information within one unified platform.

We recognized the pain points dealers were experiencing as they dug through too many apps, so we conceptualized a Bobcat Dealer Portal that gave them what they needed by:

Designing a default set of dashboard widgets tailored to each user’s role
Making users aware of what was most important for easy action
Allowing users to prioritize and customize widgets to fit their own workflows
Grouping all apps under one unified menu for simpler navigation

We focused on a default set of widgets tailored to each user’s role.

Core apps were placed as widgets on the dashboard screen acting as a home base, increasing learnability

User research identified dealers used some apps more frequently than others. We took these findings and created a default set of widgets that align with the unique needs of each dealer role

We gave users awareness of what was most important and their own ability to prioritize.

Visual cues were given on the dashboard for status information, making it easier for users to identity what actions to take for smoother handoffs between dealers

Customization features were designed so users could make their own selections based on the variations in role responsibilities and adapt to their workflows

An illustration of useful department apps.

We grouped core apps and department-focused apps.

We connected all apps under one dashboard for easy access and simple menu navigation

We recommended browser support, mobile friendliness, and consistent visual styles and interactions

We integrated all apps so information feeds from one to another, making this tool every dealers go-to-tool while also building bridges across communication channels

We started at personas but uncovered opportunities for innovation.

“Our initial task was to create personas and journey maps for this particular project, and we agreed they were needed given the unique problem space of large and small dealerships having varied yet similar needs. What was great about this client is that they trusted us to take the appropriate steps through our human-centered process, which led us to identify greater opportunities

for innovation we didn’t initially foresee. We had the chance to create design concepts to give stakeholders a vision of the future state of their product and demonstrate how to utilize the new personas to help guide product strategy. After giving our findings to them, we coached Bobcat stakeholders how they could inform product decisions moving forward.”

Matt Johnson

Senior UX Designer & Developer