Ford Conversion Platform
Opportunity
Commercial vehicles represent Ford's primary European revenue source. Many require specialized conversions: refrigerated units, racking, lifting equipment.
The conversions specifications were captured by Ford dealers through phone and email, then shared with the converters, making it difficult for everyone to keep track.
Goals
Create a commercial vehicle platform for Ford to increase sales of commercial vehicles and simplify the process to convert a vehicle.
My role as UX Lead
- Experience strategy and design
- Balanced business goals against user needs
- Research: workshops, interviews, usability testing
- Quality standards across deliverables
Team composition:
- 5 Product Designers (led by Isaac Vigil)
- Ford UK stakeholders
- Front-end, back-end, and QA teams
One of the van conversions offered: racking system
User Types & Personas
Three distinct user types guided the design: customers requiring vehicle conversion, dealers managing orders, and converters adapting vehicles.
Emily ⋅ Customer
Research
Workshops
I led the team in conducting a series of workshops with the stakeholders to identify the needs, blockers, and opportunities.
From those workshops, we defined the necessary features for each user type, the steps from request creation until delivery, and the overall process.
Notes from workshops
User flows
From the workshops we got the necessary information to create the different user flows when using the platform.
Interviews & Usability Testing
A series of remote user interviews and usability tests were conducted, engaging customers, dealers, and converters.
These sessions provided valuable insights into user behaviors, preferences, and pain points, informing critical design decisions and aligning the final product with the expectations of its diverse audience.
Comments from the interviews
Components library
Creating those components early on ensured consistency across the project, reducing friction in handoffs between the design and engineering teams.
The library covered all interactive patterns across customer, dealer, and converter flows.
High fidelity designs
The platform was designed for desktop and tablet initially, with mobile planned for a future phase. The customer flow covers the full conversion request journey.
Deliverables included the sign-in screen, customer dashboard, and a 5-step new conversion request flow.
Sign in
Customer dashboard
New request ⋅ conversion type
New request ⋅ vehicle details
New request ⋅ conversion details
New request ⋅ select dealer
New request ⋅ review & submit
Final Thoughts
Leading the design for the conversion platform was a very complex challenge; many moving parts, three distinct user types with very different needs, and a tight timeline to hold it all together.
What made it worthwhile was watching the team rise to it. Seeing the product come together, and seeing people do their best work under real constraints, was genuinely rewarding.