AUTOMOTIVE
Empowering Porsches mobility products service staff
Gaining insights with shadowing
Visit Porsche Rental
Overview
Porsche Drive Flex and Rental are mobility offers that allow customers to drive a Porsche without incurring major financial obligations. Porsche Drive Rental rents vehicles at 35 locations in Germany, while Flex is a monthly subscription to choose any vehicle from a fleet of approximately 15 vehicles.
The vehicle fleet for the mobility services Porsche Drive Rental and Flex was managed by service staff using two SaaS products and a native iOS app. To better support staff and reduce development and maintenance costs, all functions should be consolidated into a new web application.
Outcome
Consolidating three products into a new web application enabled service staff to manage reservations, customers, and vehicles digitally, and to handle handovers and returns without creating manual logs.
- Combined Rental and Flex mobility services into a single product
- Improved overview with a dedicated handover/return view
- Increased information density by optimizing table layouts
- Enhanced navigation and standardized filter presentation
- Responsive design for smartphone, tablet, and desktop
Challenge
Observations, staff interviews, and analysis showed that missing features forced service employees to use paper handover/return forms and digitize them later.
The native iOS app for Flex customers saw little adoption: beyond functional gaps, it overemphasized vehicle preparation, which service staff perceived as patronizing.
Role
UX Designer, UI Designer, UX Researcher
Tools
Sketch, Figma, Abstract, UXPin, Dovetail, Fullstory, Optimal Workshop, Confluence & Jira
Team
Senior UX Designer (me), Lead UX Designer, Product Manager, Product Owner, Front-end, Back-end and Mobile Developers
Approach
Shadowing & Interviews
To better understand service employee challenges, I conducted shadowing sessions at different locations. This method emphasizes observation, followed by clarifying interviews.
Service Blue Print
I created a service blueprint that captured user research insights for both end customers and service staff, and used it as the foundation for modeling the new user flows for the integrated tool.
Unified User Flows
Based on user research insights, I designed target mobile user flows and prototyped the core use cases for the new product in UXPin.
UX Guidelines
To sharpen the product vision and align the development team and stakeholders, I defined five core UX guidelines for the new tool.
Survey Feedback
I validated early assumptions with initial mockups via Optimal Workshop surveys sent to the entire service team, with a one-third response rate.
UI Design
I delivered the final developer-ready UI in Figma using the Porsche Design System for desktop, tablet, and mobile.
Operator shadowing and interviews
As a user researcher, I see on-site research and shadowing as essential for uncovering what remote interviews often miss. Observing workflows in context reveals the small, easily overlooked details:
A notepad, a hurried list of license plates and names, self-made forms, or personal Excel sheets. These artifacts often provide the clearest signals that existing digital workflows are incomplete, inefficient, or failing to support real user needs.
Hamburg
Manual handovers and returns
The operator tool did not support the differentiation between signs of wear and minor damages. Operators preferred handling the process with a paper form and subsequent digitization of the results.
Berlin
Manual handovers and returns
The operator tool did not support the differentiation between signs of wear and minor damages. Operators preferred handling the process with a paper form and subsequent digitization of the results.
Stuttgart
Usability issues in daily use
The Porsche Museum used the application for handovers and returns but reported several usability issues. The main challenge was quickly finding vehicles available at short notice.
Journey map & service blue print
Unified User Flows
After identifying key improvement areas, I created mobile-first wireframe flows to align the team and product owner on new capabilities and to consolidate Rental and Flex task flows.
Handover and return flows were designed for smartphone use, while vehicle management and scheduling remained desktop-focused to match real service workflows and device usage.
User Experience Guidelines
To communicate global design decisions clearly and keep stakeholders and engineers aligned, I defined five UX guidelines that served as a shared north star for the unified tool:
(1) high information density without clutter, (2) business-grade capability with consumer-level ease, (3) personable and engaging interactions, (4) hide organizational and technical complexity from users, and (5) supportive, encouraging guidance throughout key tasks.
Survey Feedback
All service employees could be reached via an internal Porsche distribution list. Through several online surveys, I validated design assumptions and collected and analyzed feedback on early mockups.
The first survey comparing the old reservation view with the new AOWA preview rated the new interface as significantly more helpful, with no negative responses.
