suttondj87@gmail.com | charlotte, nc
Ally Auto Application
A large chunk of my time at Ally has been spent as the lone designer, IA and expert for the Ally Auto application, which allows our nearly 4 million customers pay their auto loan quickly and easily directly from their phone. While this has been a great opportunity to own a large chunk Ally's business and really put my stamp on something that having a meaningful impact the lives of our customers, working with this particular line of business is not always the easiest assignment.
The Team
As I mentioned, I am the sole designer for the Ally Auto app. This means that I do all of the design for the iOS and Android apps when the business decides that we need to make adjustments to existing products based on VOC or new technological limitations for advances, or we decide to roll out a brand new feature. There is also a web team in Detroit that works on similar problems and we share a content designer, but I have the added challenge of being the only Auto employee in Charlotte while the rest of the team is based in Detroit, so I've had to work hard to make sure that my voice is heard and the app gets the representation it deserves in the larger conversations going on at Ally.
I think that it's also worth noting that, as a business that was formerly GMAC, Ally Auto sometimes struggles to innovate or maybe they don't see the value of innovating as plainly as the Bank and Invest sides of the house do, but I have made sure to innovate where I can and do everything I can to put the customer first and offer solutions to their problems through their use of the Ally Auto app.
The Process
I am lucky enough to have a researcher and a journey specialist assigned to my line of business to help ground me in the problem any time work kicks off to make sure that we are addressing the right issue and offering solutions that get to the heart of that problem. We do this by creating journey maps, conduction competitive analyses, testing, iterating and ultimately designing and developing solutions.
The Work Itself
During my time on the Ally Auto app, I've touched countless pages and features in an effort to enhance the IA of the app, improve the UI for customers, and ultimately make it easier for customers to log in, do whatever they need to do in relations to their auto loan, and go about their day without fear the they've done something wrong.
One great thing about the standalone Auto app is that it uses a slightly more modern design system (in my opinion), meaning that there's more tools at my disposal to create hierachy on pages and create pages and features that are more digestible and visually pleasing.
Outcomes
While I've gone over my contributions to the Ally Auto app at a high level, there are a few pieces that I'd like to call out in terms of actual outcomes that have been measured and can be categorized as real successes for both the Ally Auto business and its customers.
The first project I'd like to highlight is a redesign to the account details page that I worked on that gives a clear picture of what sort of status the customers account is in. At the same time, I was able enhance the IA of the page, make it look more native, and find ways to more clearly categorize information so there's no question as to what you're looking at as the customer.
Two more projects I'd like to highlight that gave the customers a powerful tools to plan their financial future and better manage their debt are request a payoff quote/lease-end options and Title Tracker. The are both related and allow a customer to view how much they'd have to pay Ally to buyout the remainder of their retail loan or lease so that they can either own the car outright or give it back to the dealer to get out of their lease. The Title Tracker takes this a step further and allows the customer to see where they're at in the title process in case they want to resell their vehicle or just end their relationship with Ally Auto for the time being. Either way, testing and customer feedback overwhelmingly show that this is something customers want and should be able to do digitally and on their own rather than having to call the call center. This is a big plus for our customers in that I designed a feature that allowed them to do something they already thought they should be able to do possibly because they know that other lenders do it this way or they simply want to avoid the hassle of having to talk to an agent on the phone. Call center volume reduction is also a big win for the business in terms of saving money and giving priority to the items people call in about that truly need to be handled by an agent.
