Welcome to the MHCIxCarMax road trip. We‘re happy to have you along for the ride!
Do you find car buying stressful? Do you find it difficult to find the perfect car for you? Is the excitement of the new car smell dampened by the need to visit dealership after dealership? No need to fear, we are Team Carmax, the CMU MHCI 2021 capstone team on a journey to explore how AI agents will revolutionize the car buying industry.
The Team
Our Crew
Christie has an academic background in both research and design. She has worked on several design teams that have addressed various scopes including sustainable reconstruction and improving students’ work environments in non-traditional settings. As a Masters student at CMU she has worked on user-centered projects that focused on designing solutions to make daily user needs and interactions easier in light of the pandemic.
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/mwlite/in/christie-sohn-b76323149
Zach has an academic background in psychology and computer science. His past experiences include research in cognitive psychology, institutional effectiveness, and recruiting. As a student at CMU, he has worked on several design and research projects focused on improving user interactions and promoting pro-social causes. When he’s not working on innovative user-centered design solutions, Zach can be found playing video games, disc golf, and (probably) watching Planet of the Apes.
LinkedIn: http://linkedin.com/in/zacharyvancleef
Before CMU, Will was a designer on the brand marketing team of a small industrial design firm where he focused on packaging design and branding. With a background in both communications studies and visual design, Will is interested in understanding how information is shared in the designed environment either virtual or analog. As a graduate student, he worked on a number of user-centric design projects and has been most excited by the challenges of service design and user research.
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/william-c-kuhlke-iii-31550017/
Carolyn has an academic background in business, human computer interaction, and design. Her past experiences include working as a UX design intern in the tech industry and as a research assistant with Carnegie Mellon’s HCI research institute. She is excited to continue exploring the process of understanding people’s motivations and challenges to design effective products. When she’s not designing, Carolyn can be found baking or exploring local coffee shops!
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/carolynzhong/
Portfolio: https://www.carolynzhong.com/
Aziz has a background in computer science and UX design. His past experience includes software engineering and UX design work at startups in the electric vehicle industry including work on building design systems. In addition, he has worked on a number of design projects focused on creating online experiences for small businesses and an AI driven web application. He is currently doing independent research looking at proactive voice assistants and autonomous vehicle experiences. When not designing, Aziz loves to run and watch cricket and the NBA. Go dubs!
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/aziz-ghadiali-a13903137/
Portfolio: azizg.com
The Members of the Conversational Experiences Team (ConvEx) at CarMax Joining Our Caravan
- Ben Treanor
- Matt Reamer
- Rachel McGuinn
- Eric Rudnick
- Courtney Walters
- Jesse Winston
Our Experienced Navigators
- Derek Wahila
- Jeremy Smith
Sprint 1: Building Our Car
Kick-Off Sessions
Our first major team effort came in the form of planning and executing our kick-off session with the Conversational Experiences team at CarMax. We divided the kick-off into two sessions and each resulted in very different but equally important insights. The bulk of session one consisted of design activities that let both our team and the ConvEx team get to know each other in a collaborative environment. We were able to gain a better understanding of how CarMax approaches the customer journey experience and identify initial customer needs that would be fruitful areas for us to explore. We kept these learnings in mind as we prepared part two of our kick-off.
We took a less structured approach to Session II and opened it up to a conversation between our teams. We had the opportunity to present the preliminary research that we had done in addition to our proposed UX strategy. In turn, the ConvEx team gave us their ideas for potential opportunity areas to think about as we continue our research, as well as the mission statement and company values that grounds the work CarMax does. We also engaged in a press release activity that provided a fun way for us to discuss our desired future state of what success looks like at the end of our engagement. We aligned on several key values and created a press release artifact that we can carry internally throughout the project that will evolve as we continue to dive deeper into the problem space. We are excited to work collaboratively with the ConvEx team and continue to provide each other with new findings and resources as the project progresses.
Exploring Cars, Agents, and Services
Our team was so excited to work on this project, we immediately drove 2 hours to the nearest CarMax (jk, but we did start doing some research!). We began this process by each selecting a relevant, unfamiliar topic to our problem space to research with the goal of collectively building a strong foundational knowledge of context-aware conversational agents, customer behaviors within the car buying industry, and service models such as Omnichannel. This was a low stakes way for us to freely learn about a topic of interest or a topic that group members had little background knowledge on. We then shared with the team in a lightning presentation where we each summarized the content of our research, identified key insights, and generated potential research questions.
Time to hit the road
As we begin wrapping up our first sprint with our car fully built, we are excited to begin our road trip towards defining the next frontier in car buying. We expect this trip to be filled with speed bumps, road blocks, and a myriad of pot holes but, we are incredibly excited about the possibilities that await us at the finish line. Buckle up, it’s going to be a bumpy one! (That’s probably enough car metaphors for now)
