Bridgestone asked for a redesign of their North America site experience to move toward a more modern, user-friendly, approach.
Through competitive analysis and familiarization of tire searching methods in the industry, the UX team opted to integrate type-ahead search functionality that would allow users to search in a variety of ways, across a number of categories.
This site's already launched. You can check it out here.
Role & Responsibilities
Experience Designer working with 2-3 person UX team
Journey mapping
User flows
Competitive assessment
Search design
Design Process
One of the first things we looked at for redesign was the user journey and how people approach tire buying (not many people are terribly excited about it--surprise!). It was important to understand what the trigger points for tire buying were (routine, seasonal, emergency, etc.), how users conducted (or didn't) research before making a decision, and how their in-person experiences with shops played into the journey as a whole.
Below is a quick look at a few different user flows we put together to better illustrate the user journey.
User Journey
Simplified Search
What was seen across all competitors' sites was a very specific drop down flow in finding the correct tire fit.
YEAR > MAKE > MODEL > TRIM
Or, by tire size, which few people know off the top of their heads.
What's frustrating about this experience is how "boxed in" it is and how much it relies on users knowing exactly what they have. This is particularly an issue when it comes to trim and whether vehicles are equipped with TPMS.
Many experiences also only allow users to proceed to the next step only if they have selected an item from the previous drop down.
In order to allow for more flexibility and allow users to search more freely, we came up with "simplified search" which made next step suggestions for users as they were typing. There is no specific order the user needs to enter information, and allows them to search in other areas on the site as well.
Initial Simplified Search Wireframe
Search Categories
Search Results
Once users entered the information needed to find tire matches, we wanted to give them a way to further refine their results according to their own criteria (road/weather conditions, price, comfort, etc.) and be able to rank the importance of each in order to make a more customized tire recommendation.
Initial Search Results Wireframe
Current Search Results Experience