Executive Summary
RaceCoated is a small specialty powder-coating business known for detail and quality. Customers were dropping off before they ever spoke to the owner because pricing, turnaround, and how to start an order were unclear. I led a research-driven redesign of the ordering experience — reframing the engagement from a UI refresh into a product strategy project — using real customer feedback from emails, past orders, and automotive community discussions.
Business Problem
- "I don't know how it works and what I need to ask about." — customer via forum post
- Turnaround time: customers had to ship parts out, wait, and get them shipped back — no acceptable downtime
- Getting an order started required emails, forum DMs, or phone calls, then waiting for a reply
- Pricing was public in theory, but options and down payments made the final price opaque
- The owner wanted to grow without losing his attention to detail and quality
Team & My Leadership Role
Role: UX Research · UX Design (Individual Project)
- Reframed the ask from a UI refresh into a product strategy engagement
- Ran the research, synthesis, personas, flows, wireframes, and mocks end-to-end
- Partnered directly with the owner to align business constraints with customer needs
- Tools: Notebook, Figma
Research
- Reviewed customer emails, past purchases, and comments across forums and social channels
- Extracted the top 4 positive and top 4 negative comments as the synthesis backbone
- Built three personas — Dan, Kiara, Felipe — from sales data, email queries, and automotive message-board feedback
- Validated the final flow with ~10 potential customers (automotive enthusiasts)
Personas
Dan
Retail Sales
Dan's Story
Dan works odd hours and doesn't have access to a garage. He lives in an apartment with his 2 roommates. He wants parts on his car powder coated, but can't have his car down for a long period of time due to needing transportation to work and nowhere to store it. Cost is also a factor when placing an order.
Kiara
Young Professional
Kiara's Story
Kiara lives in a house with her significant other and their fur babies. She works from home most of the time and has a garage. She has time in her schedule to have her car apart, but still wants to minimize it. She has a larger budget for her interests but is still money conscious.
Felipe
Retired
Felipe's Story
Felipe is living the good life at home with his spouse and dog. Spending his free time working on long term car projects. He has time and money and wants a product that's perfect with little to no concern of the cost or time.
Key Insights
- Main pain points were turnaround time, getting the order started, and unknown pricing
- Customers wouldn't tolerate downtime shipping parts out and waiting for return
- Prices existed but stopped being transparent once options and down payments were added
- Users needed to see finishes and colors, not read descriptions of them
Strategic Decisions
- Pre-stock a catalog of popular components with a refundable "core charge" so customers keep their car running while their part is coated
- Surface transparent, all-in pricing early — including options, core charges, and payment paths
- Dynamic dropdowns tied to live in-stock inventory, with a quote temporarily locking the item
- Design a lightweight inventory backend for the owner (later scoped down to in-house handling as a future stretch goal)
- Swap dropdown-based configuration for image tiles so finishes and colors could be recognized visually
Design Evolution
- 1Reviewed feedback across emails, purchases, forums, and social — synthesized top 4 positive and negative comments
- 2Built Dan, Kiara, and Felipe personas from real sales and community data
- 3Sketched the pricing flow and wireframes for the order form and inventory-aware quoting
- 4Iteration 1 — Dropdown-based configuration proved slow because customers couldn't picture finishes
- 5Iteration 2 — Image-tile selection so finish and color choices were visually immediate
- 6Final mocks: landing + ordering flow with transparent pricing and live availability
Validation & Expected Outcomes
~10 users
Customer validation
All feedback positive; interface deemed better than the closest competitor
Reduced back-and-forth to start an order
Expected
Faster purchasing decisions from transparent pricing
Expected
Improved self-service via image-tile configuration
Expected
Feature requests surfaced for roadmap
Alt payment methods, financing, live inventory
Leadership Lessons Learned
"Operational constraints — inventory, turnaround, cash flow — shape the user experience far more than the interface does. The most valuable design work reframed the business model, not the screens."