MAXXIS LifeSaver
Provide Customer Service by Assessing Tire Life
CONTEXT
TEAM
ROLE
TOOLS
OVERVIEW
Academia-Industry Project
Application
8 Month
Hao-Lin Lu
Yin-Ling Huang
Yu-Qiang Luo
Yu-Hong Ge
Wei-Hsiang Lo
Advised by
Professors Ying-Hao Juan
User Research
Concept Development
Interface Design
Industrial Design
User-Center Design
Figma
FigJam
Adobe illustrator
Keyshot
Notion
MAXXIS TIRE is a premium tire brand for mountain bike tires, motorcycle tires, and off-road tires. However, there is still a lot of room for improvement in the passenger car market, which is the biggest factor affecting market share. Therefore, MAXXIS aims to enter this market. In this context, this collaboration project between MAXXIS TIRE and the SCID team of Shih Chien University has responded together to the company’s future plans with the two main goals of internal-innovation stimulation and brand-image improvement that have been achieved by an app - MAXXIS LifeSaver.
The changes in the tire industry have been relatively slow, which shows that the real needs of people have not been truly seen, so now is the turning point for the tire industry. Leverage the strengths of MAXXIS to create a professional and personalized user experience for customers, and use this as the basis for entering the new market and transforming the brand.
MAXXIS’s problem
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Although Maxxis is a domestic brand with high-quality tires, it does not promote its brand as well as other imported brands.
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Up to 70% of people don't know what tires they are using and customers often just follow the advice of their dealers or technicians.
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Instead of focusing on inventing "new tires", tire brands need to think outside the box.
MAXXIS’s Goal
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Based on the pain points of passenger car customers in the tire purchasing process, LifeSaver can provide professional assistance through MAXXIS’s database.
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LifeSaver is the first digital product of MAXXIS, and it is the first step in helping to transform the brand.
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LifeSaver allows MAXXIS to engage customers by providing personalized service directly, no longer relying on retailers and repair stores.
00 DESIGN OBJECTIVE
How does MAXXIS leverage its strengths to create an efficient tire purchasing experience for its customers?
Tire Life Calculator
Customers can get expert advice on whether or not to replace their tires with LifeSaver, which combines tire mileage and year of manufacture to assess tire life. By detecting the user's daily driving path, it automatically updates the mileage and age of the tires so the user knows when it's time to replace them.
Tread Scanner
When customers need to travel long distances, Lifesaver can scan the tire tread depth through the LiDAR lens on the phone and use the results as suggestions for customers to change tires. In addition to this, it also provides a guide to tire depth and safety.
DESIGN SOLUTION
Design an application to assess tire life using MAXXIS’s database to provide customers with services before and after tire purchase.
Personalized Settings
It meets the needs of different users through personalization and multiple settings. When replacing tires, simply scan the invoice or serial number of the tire for quick uploading, and it also offers the ability to add other vehicles, allowing users to manage the life of tires on all their vehicles at the same time.
01 RESEARCH
02 IDEATION
• Brainstorming
• Concept
03 EVALUATION
04 FINAL GUI
• What’s the Gap between Maxxis and Customers?
• Who Are the Users?
• User Testing
• Stakeholder Review
• Mobile GUI overview
• Main Task
05 TAKE OUT
• Human-centered design shines in ths project
• Categorizing and refining consumers is the key.
01 RESEARCH
We went to retailers across Taiwan to understand the situation. In addition to interviewing the owners of the retail stores, we also conducted brief interviews with the customers in the stores.
The most important finding is that in the tire industry, customers are almost out of touch with brands. Most customers choose tires under the recommendation of the maintenance factory technicians or use original tires directly. For customers, the timing of changing tires is more important than what kind of tires to change.
😥 Customers are not
very loyal to brands.
More than half of customers said they didn't care what brand their tires were. Some customers simply choose the tires they are currently using.
Photos from the Questionnaires
Insight
Based on the results of our field research, we designed a questionnaire and posted it in car owners' groups on Facebook. We obtained 142 valid questionnaires to understand our customers' thoughts and preferences on tire brands.
💵 Customers don’t mind
paying for additional services.
33 yrs old he / him
“ I don't care what tires to change, I only care about when I need to change my tires “
Leo Wang
Most customers are more concerned about the service than the price of the tires. For example, the price of Chijia Auto Repair Factory is high, but it is very popular because of its service.
Photos from the Field research
What’s the Gap between Maxxis and Customers?
The car is their working partner and is a necessity when they work. They are very dependent on their cars. These people are middle-aged and elderly, so they usually have families.
Persona
During this process, I worked closely with our user research team. The researchers screened interviewers based on user profiles and conducted semi-structured interviews with 10 users to identify potential problems.
We believe that using a semi-structured interview allows users to express their truest thoughts.
Photos from the Interview process
Who Are the Users?
🧐 Job
Seek professional and trustworthy advice on when to change tires.
😩 Pain
Tire life cannot be interpreted directly from mileage or year.
Tire retailers are unable to provide personalized advice on the driving habits of their customers.
🥹 Gain
A tread check is necessary before a long drive.
Need more detailed information about tire features.
💡 Product
Tire life assessment service.
💊 Pain Reliever
Provide a service that calculates tire life by combining mileage and year.
Provide personalized recommendations and assessments.
🎊 Gain Creator
Using the LiDAR lens on the phone can scan the tread depth.
Quantify the main features of the tires to facilitate customer selection.
👊 Car maintenance
is the main requirement.
Many customers know very little about tires, but they are very concerned about "Maintenance", especially after they reach a certain mileage.
🧐 The opinions of technicians
have a great influence on customers.
More than half of customers rely on technicians to help them make decisions. In addition, they are concerned about the professionalism of the plant equipment.
01 🔧 Professional
02 🙍♂️ Personalized
• Use customer information to provide customized services.
03 📲 Efficient
• Simplify the process to save customers time and effort.
• Professional assistance is provided through brand advantages.
Concept
To help us move forward, we brainstormed appropriate solutions based on the opportunities we identified during the consumer journey. In addition to categorizing our ideas, we went through multiple rounds of discussions to find what we thought were the key tasks.
02 IDEATION
Brainstorming
White Boarding
Card Sorting
Mapping
Prototype V.1
• 🧮 Tire Life Calculator
The tire life calculator is the main requirement of the customer. The calculation of the tire life is done by using the MAXXIS’s database, with the current tire mileage entered by the customer, combined with the tire's date of manufacture.
• 📡 Tread Scanner
Use the LiDAR lens on the phone to accurately scan the tread depth of the tires before a long trip. Once the scan is complete, the app will display the exact tread depth and advise customers when to change tires.
• 📝 Personalized Advisor
By inputting personal driving information, such as car models and driving areas, MAXXIS can provide customers with more professional advice through its database.
03 EVALUATION
We tested Prototype V.1 with five users and, based on this data, finalized the design using problems from the testing and feedback from users. Listed below are the problems we found and how we analyzed them and redesigned them.
User Testing
On-site Testing
• Insight 3 : 🤯 Manual data entry is too time-consuming and frustrating for users.
Change :
Information Architecture & Logic
In our tests, we found that users are very resistant to manual data entry, and almost every user feedback that this will reduce the frequency of their use of the product, so we switched to GPS positioning to provide user information and allow them to actively filter whether to upload data, such a process can greatly reduce the burden of users in the use of the product.
When the application detects that the user is moving at the vehicle's speed, it will record the time on the trip page, and the user can select which data belongs to the mileage they have passed while driving and upload it to the tire life progress bar on the home page.
• Insight 2 : 😰 Can't find the key information.
Change :
Highlight key messages as well as features
1. To the user, it's very meaningless to give a date indication, they are more sensitive to the number of the depth of the tread, so we changed the depth of the tread to a more visible place.
2. Features located in the scanning screen are very difficult for users to recognize, so we gave the flashlight and the scanned part of the background to highlight the icon so that users won't be confused by the complex screen.
• Insight 1 : 😵💫 Overly complex, users are overwhelmed.
Change :
Adjusting the functional hierarchy of a page
1. Users are easily distracted by the cars on the screen and become accustomed to clicking on them when they are in use, resulting in many errors. So we reduced the proportion of cars on the page to allow users to quickly locate the information they need.
2. Users often need to click on the front and rear wheel switches to refresh their memories, which is very unintuitive for them, so we display all tires directly on the homepage so that users can see them at a glance without having to do much.
3. Through user feedback, we realized that the features that were originally in the main feature list were not used as much as they should be, so we moved the features that were used more often to the list.
Change :
Provide enough motivation to the user
1. Users don't have enough knowledge about the product, so we directly categorize the product on the search list to let users know the main features of the product and make it easy for them to make a purchase.
2. During user testing, users reported that there were no other ratings and reviews provided to users, leaving them without a reliable basis for browsing the product. Therefore, we imported the existing data from the official website to provide users with a reference.
In the end, we presented the final version to the stakeholders and they were very satisfied with the results, and we recommended the proposal to their marketing team to help transform the brand by combining existing products with digitization.
Stakeholder Review
Photos from the stakeholder review
04 FINAL GUI
Mobile GUI Overview
Design System
Main Task
CALCULATE
SCAN
SETTING
• Human-centered design shines in Academia-Industry project
Collaborative projects make proposals more difficult. Not only did we have to compete with other teams, but we also had to satisfy the different opinions of stakeholders from various sectors. For this proposal, we chose our customers in the market as the starting point for the project, because we believe that no matter what type of product, consumers' opinions are crucial. Stakeholders were ultimately satisfied with our design proposal.
• Categorizing and refining consumers is the key to success
At the beginning of user research, planning is more important than anything else. We plan to first find the user group through quantitative research and then conduct in-depth interviews. Such a plan allows the research process to run smoothly, gradually narrowing down the scope, and can be effective in finding insights that can help greatly in decision-making. By focusing on specific users, our designs can be more targeted, which is very important to the brand and us.