UX Writing - Well rounded

At Driveway I had the opportunity to specialize in content standards, as well as support my product, engineering, and design colleagues through the development and evangelization of reusable components and standards.

When I started we were just beginning to build our team, and the design system itself. Once we established a solid baseline, we were able to start looking at how the design system could influence the user experience beyond giving our department a box of tools for efficient and consistent designs.

I chose to focus on voice and tone standards, beginning with asking users how they viewed our current content and how they felt about it. From there I conducted a series of internal work shops to establish a refined voice that both spoke to our users and reflected who Driveway is as a company. Next, I created a tone map that reflected the areas of tone shift, and defined tone parameters for each of the major stops on our customer's journeys through shop, sell, learn, and finance paths.

In parallel to this work, my product design counter part began looking at design principals. This work dovetailed beautifully with the voice and tone work, resulting in a set of simple principals that align directly to the content guides. My colleague has published an article with more details about what we accomplished and how we got there.

Driveway Design System Design Principals

As a training company, learning resources are essential for our customers. The knowledge base and learning management system (LMS) are the primary offering for members. One of the first things I noticed though, was that depending on your access level, the main navigation would change around depending on what part of the knowledge base you were accessing. I knew if I found it confusing, so would our customers.

I began asking questions around support calls, click tracing, and usage statistics. By far the search page was the most accessed page within the knowledge base. So, I designed a project to assess the needs and planned a redesign. My study included:

- General Survey
- Card Sort Exercise
- In-depth interviews
- Detailed Plan for re-architecting the site

The award winning Cadillac Super Cruise feature lets drivers relax and let the vehicle do the driving. This product includes a lighted steering wheel and icons to assist, but it also has some limitations for safety reasons. It's vital for the driver to have information at hand quickly. Our team recommended messaging that was deemed to disruptive. Without it though, it didn't give the driver enough feedback. In a lightning fast reversal, I worked with the product designer and engineering team to create a series of messages that the driver could access on demand and only when necessary. Check out the Cadillac page to see more about this product and some sample messages.

The GM trailering features let drivers safely and confidently hitch and tow. This product includes specialized camera views, profiles for multiple trailers, and reminders.

People who trailer may be new to the process, only do it once or twice a summer, or pros who trailer all the time. I developed a checklist to help new and infrequent trailer drivers remember all the steps for safe hitching.

I worked closely with product designers and user researchers to integrate simple messaging, easy to follow setup instructions, and other on-screen messaging.

Check out the GMC Trailering page to watch the product video and some sample messages.