Toolbox - Mayank Kinger

Streamlining vehicle inventory and operations for dealerships

MY ROLE

Sole Product Designer — Research & Discovery, Information Architecture, Product Strategy, UX Design, Visual Design, Handoff, Design QC

TEAM

Jordan Detota, VP of Product

Jorge Rodriguez, PM (Mobile)

Eduard Sindiukov, PM (Web)

Kevin To, QA

FE & BE: 15+ Developers

OVERVIEW

Ikon Technologies is a leader in automotive inventory management, asset protection, and vehicle theft recovery. Our Toolbox application suite integrates hardware and software solutions, empowering automotive dealerships to efficiently map, track, and safeguard their vehicle inventory and keys. Dealers can also offer this service to their customers, creating a new revenue stream and enhancing their value proposition.

PLATFORM

Web, Mobile (iOS and Android)

IMPACT

Showcasing the prototype of this revamped product played a pivotal role for our sales team to onboard 134 new dealerships, accounting for 33% of Ikon Technologies' total business, reinforcing the product's value proposition in a competitive market.

The Challenge

PROBLEMS

Ikon Technologies' obsolete inventory management system was barely meeting the basic needs of its users at the car dealership, leaving them frustrated and overly reliant on customer support to perform basic operations. This situation prompted many challenging conversations around user experience. We wanted the new Toolbox to not only address the current pain points but also to enhance the overall dealership experience.

BUSINESS GOALS

Strengthen the value proposition of our core products.
Enhance usability to drive active engagement, which was previously below 3% of the total user base.
Optimize operations to minimize support requests and reduce overhead costs.

Research Process

DISCOVERY + DEFINE

Ikon Technologies was founded by and employs a significant number of former auto dealers who experienced these challenges firsthand and joined the company to help solve them. These individuals proved to be indispensable assets in understanding the problem, the users, and the industry and we leaned on their expertise at every step of the way.

In addition to our own internal experts, we also relied on input and feedback from staff at local dealerships to get some unbiased opinions. These included general managers, sales managers, salespeople, and more. Through the process we also sought feedback from customer support and field operations team members.

Key focus questions:

What are the challenges or barriers with the current app use & adoption?
What does a "sales pitch" for Toolbox sound like?
What sorts of users at the dealership would have the most usage and benefit from our system?
Do small and large-scale dealerships have different needs when it comes to inventory management? If so, how do these differences manifest in day-to-day operations?
Lo-fi prototype feedback

Core User Needs

FIND THE CAR, FIND THE KEY

The core purpose of Toolbox is to enable dealers to locate cars and keys as quickly and easily as possible. The guiding principle for the design was KISS (Keep It Simple, Stupid)—eliminating unnecessary complexity to ensure a seamless and efficient experience.

MOBILE-FIRST APPROACH

With a significant percentage of salespeople relying on mobile devices to locate inventory on the go and showcase vehicles to customers, a strong mobile foundation was critical. The current system lacked essential features like a map for inventory location, making it imperative to introduce this functionality to meet their needs and improve usability.

DRIVING SALES ENGAGEMENT

Beyond inventory management, the overarching goal is to help dealerships sell more cars. Toolbox can enhance sales engagement by integrating features like sending brochures, displaying CARFAX safety ratings, and other customer-centric tools that make vehicles more appealing and instill buyer confidence.

DEALERSHIP CUSTOMIZATION

Dealerships of different sizes have varied requirements. Customizable settings, such as lot age ranges, battery thresholds, customer alert configurations, and automated marketing triggers, were essential to address the diverse operational needs of both small and large-scale dealerships.

Information Architecture

MOBILE ARCHITECTURE

The mobile experience catered primarily to those employees that work the lot and interact with customers. These users are typically salespeople, lot attendants, technicians, and similar roles. The features we focused on delivering first were finding and pairing vehicles and keys.

WEB APP ARCHITECTURE

For an MVP release, we focused on building features for each platform based on the most common users and use cases. For the web platform, our users were primarily manager types who were behind desks for most of the day and not out walking the lot. Their primary features were administrative and tracking.

SOLUTION

Stringing the features into a cohesive experience

Inventory page on Web

From L to R: inventory list view, map view, vehicle details, CARFAX report.

From L to R: pairing page, scanning flow modal, vehicle pairing details, device pairing status

Configurations page to let user set custom values for lot age ranges, battery threshold

Device details page

General setting page

Learnings

The auto business is a fast-paced environment where every minute counts and money talks. This can sometimes make research difficult as dealers don't often see the value in offering their time to you and show little interest in anything that doesn't immediately provide them a financial return, even if it boosts efficiency or satisfaction. In some ways, this experience exposed the reasons why the industry is fraught with distrust and negativity from consumers.

Still here? This project was a beast, and I'm leaving plenty out. I'd be delighted to talk about it in more detail.

Check out my other projects