Digital Product Passport (DPP)
Rebuilding trust in secondhand fashion.
Motorway RSA
Roadside assistance and service booking for vehicle owners
MobileConsumerService Design
Context
Exploration project · End-to-end MVP · Stakeholder-validated
Motorway is a concept product designed for vehicle owners who need roadside assistance (RSA), service booking, and vehicle health tracking through a single app. The client an automotive service provider wanted to move their RSA and service booking operations off phone calls and into a self-serve mobile experience, with a membership program (Right Lane Club) as the revenue layer.
This was an end-to-end MVP exploration: from design thinking through information architecture, to high-fidelity screens across the full user journey. The product was validated with stakeholders but not shipped to production. I'm including it here because it's the only consumer mobile work in my portfolio and the design problems it posed (real-time tracking under anxiety, location-based service matching, membership conversion) are meaningfully different from the enterprise compliance products I've shipped since.
The Problem
When a vehicle breaks down, the user's state is stress, not patience. The existing process call a helpline, describe the location verbally, wait with no visibility into what's happening fails at every point where anxiety is highest. There's no confirmation the request was received. No ETA. No way to know if the mechanic is actually coming.
Service booking had the same fragmentation problem from a different direction. Users who needed routine maintenance had no way to find affiliated service centres nearby, book a slot without calling, or track the service status once the vehicle was dropped off.
The phone call is doing too much work location handoff, request confirmation, status updates, membership verification. Every one of those is a UI problem that a well-designed app can solve better.
Research with target users surfaced three clear signals: 90% wanted real-time tracking, 80% preferred app-based interaction over phone calls for service requests, and 40% were interested in a membership model if the benefits were surfaced clearly. These were research inputs the design had to make them real.
90%Wanted real-time service tracking
80%Preferred app over phone for RSA requests
40%Open to membership if benefits were visible
Design Thinking
Before wireframing, the team ran HMW (How Might We) sessions to reframe business goals as design problems. The business wanted to increase service revenue, grow membership, and move RSA operations off the phone. The HMW reframe turned those goals into questions the product could answer: How might we make RSA requests traceable? How might we surface membership benefits at the moment a user needs them most? How might we bridge the gap between a user's location and the nearest service branch?
The information architecture was structured around four primary jobs users came to do: track an active RSA request, book or manage a service, understand their vehicle health, and manage their profile and membership. Navigation reflects that four tabs, each owning a distinct job, no cross-contamination.
01Home — RSA Status and Vehicle Overview
The home screen is designed for two states: idle (no active RSA) and active (RSA in progress). When an RSA request is active, the tracking card surfaces immediately current status ("Vehicle Started"), a Track CTA, and the vehicle registration. The user doesn't have to navigate anywhere. The most urgent information is the first thing they see.
Below the tracking card: last serviced date, next due date, and the Right Lane Club membership prompt. The membership banner appears here deliberately a user who just had their car break down is the most receptive audience for a membership pitch, not a user browsing idly.
02Service Booking — Location, Scheduling, Pickup
Service booking is split into two flows: find a service outlet and schedule a service. The Service Type screen uses the device's current location to surface the nearest affiliated outlets on a map, ranked by distance. The user picks an outlet, not a phone number. Location ambiguity the primary source of friction in RSA phone calls is eliminated.
The Pickup and Drop Service flow handles a specific use case: the user wants the vehicle collected from their address, serviced, and returned. Pickup location defaults to current address. Drop location defaults to same. Date and time selectors use a horizontal scroll calendar rather than a dropdown one-handed, thumb-reachable, no context switching. The flow ends with a booking confirmation state designed to feel resolved, not just functional.
03Vehicle Health — The Righto-meter
Vehicle health was the most data-dense surface in the product. The challenge was presenting OBD (On-Board Diagnostics) data trip distance, driver score, speed patterns, alarm events, fuel consumption, error codes in a way that's readable by a car owner, not a mechanic.
I structured it as a vertical scroll across four data zones: vehicle identity and the Righto-meter (trip distance chart with driver score), speed pattern bar chart, alarm breakdown donut (Harsh Acceleration, Quick Lane Change, Over Speeding, Harsh Braking), and the analytics summary with Errors Spotted. Each zone stands alone a user checking their driver score doesn't need to scroll past error codes. The errors are at the bottom because they're the highest-stakes information: they get a dedicated section, not a badge on an icon.
Expected Outcomes
This MVP was validated with stakeholders, not shipped to production. The outcomes below are projected based on the design decisions made and the research signals that shaped them. They represent what a live deployment would have been measured against.
1
Reduction in RSA dispatch call time
Replacing verbal location handoff with GPS-confirmed address eliminates the most time-consuming step in the breakdown-to-dispatch flow.
2
Reduction in inbound status inquiry calls
Real-time RSA tracking on the home screen removes the primary reason users call back after submitting a request "where is my mechanic?"
3
Increase in membership conversion
Surfacing Right Lane Club benefits on the home screen during an active RSA event the highest-anxiety, highest-receptivity moment is the optimal conversion point.
4
Increase in self-serve service bookings
Map-based outlet discovery and in-app scheduling removes the phone call from routine service booking entirely.
Reflection
What Worked
- Designing for the anxiety state, not the calm state. Placing the RSA tracking card as the first element on the home screen rather than a general dashboard was the right call. A user in a breakdown is not browsing. They need one answer immediately.
- Map-first service outlet discovery. Distance-ranked outlets on a map resolve the location ambiguity problem that phone-based RSA booking creates. The user points, not describes.
- Separating vehicle health data by decision type. Organising OBD data into zones (health score → driving patterns → errors) meant casual users could read their driver score without being alarmed by error codes they don't understand.
What I'd Approach Differently
- User testing before finalising the RSA request flow. The flow was validated with stakeholders, not users in a breakdown scenario. Stress testing in a simulated emergency context would have surfaced edge cases low battery, poor signal, one-handed use while calling that stakeholder review doesn't catch.
- The membership conversion moment needs more friction, not less. Placing the Buy Membership CTA immediately after a breakdown event risks feeling exploitative rather than helpful. A follow-up notification 24 hours later when the anxiety has passed is likely a better conversion point than the home screen card.
This was early-career work 2018–2019, before I moved into enterprise compliance and AI-enabled products at TrusTrace. The design problems are simpler than what I work on now, but the thinking about anxiety states, real-time feedback, and information hierarchy under stress carried forward into every compliance workflow I've designed since.