Autobase: Buy a car by scanning a QR code

Product Sales Demo

Brief – It takes too long to buy a car

In 2023, 75 million cars were sold worldwide.

• When you go to buy a car, you can expect to spend 5 to 6 hours at the dealership and to fill in multiple paper documents.
• With the new AutoBase product the time to settlement will be reduced to 1 hour
• All documentation will be electronically captured in a smart contract enabling increased sales volumes and eliminating paperwork.

The Team

For the mobile app I’m the UX Designer and Web Developer, and I guide my 5-person team through Design Thinking sessions to brainstorm the idea, personas, and tech approach. I’m responsible for part of the demo presentation we used to compete in our company’s 48-hour hackathon. Our team of five consists of three developers, a project manager and me.

Scope and Constraints – 48 Hours

The constraints were the 48 hours for the competition and to use the tech we had available. So we used a basic HTML/CSS front end with some jQuery and JavaScript with a dotnet back end and the Microsoft Smart Contract protocol. Budget wasn’t a factor except for our use of the Smart Contract engine in Azure provided by Microsoft.

My Process and Role

As a UX Designer my process is Design Thinking and my role is to keep the team on track, focused on our user personas.

First we brainstormed the idea, getting all of our ideas into sticky notes in Balsamiq. Then we created a storyboard for the user journey.

Start with a storyboard

Once we decided on our personas we got started with the storyboards. This is how we determined the steps and roles each user would take in the transaction. The user journey.

Jennifer, the customer

“Every time I have to buy a car I dread it. The process is tedious, can take hours, and I leave the dealership feeling like I didn’t get a good deal. I want all the information up front so I can make the best decision for me as quickly as possible. I do my own research so I want the mobile app to support that by showing me that information.”

– Jennifer (persona)

First, Jennifer. She wants to use her mobile app to browse cars via price, make and model, then answer a few short questions on the way to getting financing and then buying her car. Then she goes to pick it up and scans the QR code on the car to complete the transaction, all on the blockchain:

Luke, the dealer

“I have good people but they spend way too much time doing paperwork, getting approvals from customers, and going back and forth with financing and service details for the car. What if I could help them go 5x as fast as they do now?”

– Luke (persona)

Luke can manage every aspect of the dealer side of this transaction. He can adjust the financial menu containing his dealership’s lease and loan offerings, see sales and inventory stats, and manage his dealerships, all in a paperless mode. Jennifer’s purchase shows on his system as well, and he can check it in a few seconds and approve the deal:

A circle of trust is created between the customer and the dealer, and both get what they want – Luke gets to sell Jennifer a car and the process took 1 hour instead of 5 or 6.

Wireframe designs

Jennifer talks to the dealer through a portal

Before or after picking a car, Jennifer can upload the necessary documents to prove her income and identity. Then she can view any current or previous contracts she has with the dealer.

Jennifer searches for and buys a car

As a customer, I want to buy a car without talking to a salesperson or filling out paperwork, so I use the mobile app to find a Dealer location then I can search for the car I want based on make, model, and price. I can also apply for finance, the app is very helpful, giving me a wizard stepper to keep me on track:

Luke – I want to sell cars and track progress month to month

Luke wants to sell cars as quickly and efficiently as possible while reducing paperwork and improving my sales numbers. I want all contracts to be Smart Contracts, especially leases so I can quickly and easily transfer them to a new owner and all the car’s history, and repairs, are kept securely.

Outcomes and Lessons

The outcome was a 4th place finish, worldwide, and an app that allowed a customer to buy a car by scanning a QR code, and let a Dealer track and approve that purchase request electronically; even the financing was handled on the Smart Contract (blockchain). We were very excited with the result!

Something we missed was our problem statement and story didn’t explain the role of Smart Contracts clearly enough. The judges couldn’t quite see the value in this app because Smart Contracts were a very new, and risky, concept; where would these public contracts be stored? Would they be fast enough? Would they be secure?

In addition, the event can be stressful with the long hours and tight deadline, and we had some rough patches as a team where we had trouble agreeing on the users, the problem to solve, and our solution. In hindsight we could have used Design Thinking more to go back to the user to focus on Jennifer’s needs, and Luke, how could we serve him more reliably and securely with a publicly available Smart Contract?

We agreed that next time we’d keep the story as simple as possible.

In spite of these difficulties, and pivoting our idea once during the competition, we managed to do extremely well and we learned a lot. The most important thing is the idea and communicating it clearly.