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Reimagining Used Car Buying with Trust

Vehiculum GmbH
(Automobile  platform)

Background

Germany's used car market is large but plagued by fragmentation and mistrust. Buyers frequently encounter fake listings, inconsistent pricing, and unresponsive sellers. Vehiculum identified an opportunity to reimagine the digital car buying experience, building a platform that prioritizes trust, transparency, and end-to-end support from discovery to purchase.

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Task

As the Senior Product Designer, I was hired to:

  • Envision a North Star experience that earns user trust and simplifies the car buying journey

  • Align cross-functional teams around this shared vision

  • Create foundational flows and information architecture for a mobile-first, web-ready platform

  • Build an adaptive design system to support the future product

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Actions

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Framed the Problem & Opportunity

  • Analyzed gaps in existing platforms: disjointed experience, lack of verified listings, and no end-to-end support.

  • Conducted user interviews to uncover key pain points: fake listings, poor communication, repetitive tasks, and fear of scams.

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Defined the Vision

  • Wrote a detailed product vision document inspired by strategic design thinking

  • Set 5 key product principles: Trust, Guidance, Personalization, Seamlessness, Transparency

  • Outlined the entire user flow: Search → Compare → Book Test Drive → Pay → Post-Purchase

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Mapped Information Architecture

  • Built a scalable IA covering: Homepage, Search Results, Car Details, Booking Flow, Payment, Post-Sale Dashboard

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Created MVP Feature Framework

  • Used Kano Model to prioritize:
    Must-Haves: Verified sellers, escrow payments, vehicle history reports
    Performance Features: Recommendations, comparisons
    Delighters: Guided search, after-sale services

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Established Design Direction

  • Selected Material-inspired components (Mantine + Tailwind CSS)

  • Typography: Poppins for readability

  • Color palette: Purple tones for trust, white space for clarity

  • Focused on WCAG accessibility and mobile-first principles

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Collaborated Across Teams

  • Ran vision workshops with product, tech, and business teams

  • Conducted walkthroughs with stakeholders to align on scope and feasibility

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Highlighted Risks & Assumptions

  • Identified critical assumptions around seller onboarding, legal constraints of escrow, and user willingness to transact digitally

Results

While the product didn’t reach development due to company-wide layoffs, the vision work laid a strategic foundation for future iterations:

  • Provided a shared north star for the company post-acquisition

  • Reduced misalignment by outlining a full information and UX architecture

  • Accelerated planning by defining user flows and trust-building strategies

  • Created a modular design system ready to scale

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Thanks for making it all the way!

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