AutoVision
Transforming Automotive Retail with Generative AI
I spent my summer at AutoZone working as a UX designer. For my final project, I proposed a new search functionality utilizing generative AI.
How might I help the AutoZone mobile app customer find the right product faster?
Utilizing research conducted by the DXR team, AutoVision targets a specific power user. He is represented by the persona Ambitious Alonso. He is a 20 year old automotive enthusiast who is constantly fixing and enhancing his ride. In an emergency, his first stop is always AutoZone.
I talked to many different teams to gain an understanding of the problem space.
I initially scheduled meetings with our in-house UXR team to understand mobile app users and consumer behavior on e-commerce platforms, and how this differs from in-store behavior.
I wanted to get a clear understanding of the most important and top selling categories. This was important to understand because it would help me determine what product to focus on for my designs.
Supporting the stores is an important part of the aftermarket automotive industry. I interviewed Taylor, who has been working at the Germantown AutoZone store for 2 years. I wanted AutoVision to mimics the advice a store AutoZoner would give to a customer.
I needed to get a clear understanding of the capabilities of implementing a large language model into our mobile app.
Once I designed a mid-fidelity version of my idea, I talked to the mobile app team to gather feedback. A Senior UX designer was able to provide valuable feedback on how I can create a full end to end experience by thinking about the signed in user and the signed out user.
An important part of releasing a new feature is understanding the impact it could potentially have with numbers. The analytics team helped me find data on the business benefit and also how much this would cost.
After getting a clear picture of the needs and benefits, I began designing a high fidelity version of AutoVision. I started by creating a mind map to highlight all the key features I wanted to include in the prototype.
I looked at three different companies in the retail space who have successfully launched a Generative AI search feature.
Etsy Gift Mode
Users take a quiz that asks them questions about the occasion, the gift recipient's relationship to them etc. Then, utilizing Open AI’s GPT- 4, Etsy Gift Mode generates tailored gift recommendations. Thereby addressing common gift buying challenge of not knowing what to buy.
AMZ Rufus
Amazon is one of AutoZone's biggest competitors in the e-commerce space. They launched Rufus which is an AI chat bot.
Carrefour Hopla
Carrefour is a multinational chain of supermarkets founded in France. Users can ask Hopla any questions related to food. For example, I asked Hopla how to make ratatouille and it recommended me all of the products necessary to make this dish.
AutoZone has an extensive library of components and a robust style guide. I utilized both to help design AutoVision. Since I was proposing a net new experience, I also designed new components to that would fit with the product.
When choosing a third party vendor, I had to consider three key factors, price, quality, and speed. In the end, I believe working with Google's AI studio will be the best choice.
Price refers how many dollars it costs per 1M tokens. 1 token does not necessarily represent 1 search query.
Speed is measured by output tokens per second. In other words, it is how quickly the model can generate text.
A model's quality is measured by many things. Some of the most important are: perplexity (how well a probability model predicts a sample), human evaluation, how well it translates other languages.
During the last week of my internship I presented my idea to three directors in the e-commerce department at AutoZone.
Providing customers with trustworthy advice has always been a core tenant of AutoZone. Before launching the product to customers, I would recommend having an internal team validate proof of concept and monitor the results to ensure accuracy. Generative AI can be extremely beneficial to retailers. The technology is only getting cheaper and cheaper and more and more accurate. I can't wait to see what the future will hold.
My time at AutoZone was an incredible learning experience. I had the opportunity to join a talented team and build upon established design foundations. The final project I worked on enabled me to demonstrate my ability to think critically about the company's needs and envision an effective solution. I am especially grateful to all the people and teams who helped make my summer unforgettable!
