Workshop Platform
/ CarMechanica
AutomotiveCarMechanica connects Master Workshops across Australia with consumers – powered by Mobil 1.
/ OPPORTUNITY
MotorActive (product distribution specialists in automotive aftermarket brands), in partnership with Mobil 1 (a world-renowned synthetic motor oil), engaged DIJGTAL to explore an opportunity around creating a consumer to retail service platform that connected car owners to Master Workshop car mechanics Australia-wide — A Master Workshop being a mechanic that’s met certain service criteria, is an expert in vehicle repair and provides a high quality customer experience.
CarMechanica were aware of car owners becoming increasingly less trusting of mechanics. They saw an opportunity in which they could become the trusted automotive authority for these consumers, giving them peace of mind knowing that the mechanic they booked on the platform would provide a premium service, and wouldn’t take advantage of them.
However, once we began working on this project we discovered there was an even bigger opportunity that CarMechanica could leverage off which was to educate consumers on how and what to do when it came to their ongoing vehicle maintenance.
/ Approach
We began conducting research with workshops and consumers to understand the challenges that they faced, uncovering common themes of transparency on price and labour, as well as lack of education/knowledge transfer from workshops to car owners.
We spoke to 13 Master Workshops and conducted one-on-one interviews with 17 car enthusiasts who demonstrated pride of ownership, i.e., motorists who loved their vehicle, and thought of it as an extension of their identity.
We built out an understanding of the current experience from both sides including likes, dislikes and areas of improvement in order to gain an understanding of how we could improve trust.
It became obvious that in order for workshops to become the trusted guide for servicing and repairs they would need to be completely transparent in their approach, providing consumers more tailored vehicle education.
At this stage our learnings were clear: Trust was key, and it's loss was felt.
We moved onto early concept validation, testing assumptions and ultimately understanding how we could best design a solution that would engage and build trust between workshops and consumers.
We ran all of our car enthusiasts through early concepts asking them to walk us through each one explaining:
- How they would go about finding a mechanic
- What type of information they were wanting to see
- How they'd book a car in for a service, and if they'd want to receive notifications/reminders of when an upcoming car service was required
As this project progressed, we discovered there was much more CarMechanica could do to educate and empower car owners — further bolstering their position as a leading and trusted automotive authority for consumers. We took our initial design concept of a retail service platform, and built out a bigger, higher level solution that addressed the problem in the market around trust, we validated this larger concept and roadmapped out its evolution with CarMechanica as the first stone that needed to be laid to set the foundation.
/ Outcome
We designed the CarMechanica platform mapping out end-to-end customer journeys, created wireframes and a low fidelity interactive prototype, produced high fidelity user interface designs as well as detailed documentation which was all handed over to the MotorActive development team ready for them to build, implement and deploy.
