FCA Automobiles
Website Architecture Project
FCA (Stellantis) is a constellation of 14 iconic automotive brands and two mobility arms. FCA is more than transportation; they’re about moving people and making connections.
Challenge: The biggest challenge was integrating with the current agency of record and gathering information to redesign the FCA journalist portal for new vehicle releases.
Approach: Working to a tight deadline, I needed to work quickly to understand the needs and user habits, so I took a hands-on approach and interviewed three journalists via phone to understand their needs from a portal site.
The Research
The user research for this project was acquired by interviewing automotive journalists via phone. My goal was to find out how they currently get access to information needed to write articles on new car releases and uncover current pain points and must-haves.
Pain Points
Information about new vehicle releases was scattered throughout multiple sources.
Pertinent information, such as new vehicle specs, was buried within articles.
High-resolution imagery was hard to find and not typically located with vehicle spec info.
Most information on new vehicles was not available to download, making it very difficult to write offline articles.
Must Haves
A simple design that contains a new spec or whats new area for each vehicle.
A method to quickly switch to different vehicles without exiting and re-entering the site.
A bank of high-resolution imagery tailored around new features for each vehicle.
The ability to download information so that articles can be written while the journalist is offline.
The Architecture
The architecture below addresses the pain points and must-haves from my interview sessions with automotive journalists. Also included is a landing page for the site that allows for a quick selection of a specific brand and model.
Once the architecture was complete, a prototype was created and made available to journalists for testing. Once testing and one revision session were finished, the architecture was handed off to the design and development team for production.
The Outcome
Within a short time after the launch of the new site, accolades from automotive journalists were given to the agency of record for producing a new and improved experience. An experience that shortened the time needed to write quality articles.