Sideflip iOS app
OVERVIEW
Dealerships and OEMs began experimenting with mobility services like subscriptions, rentals, and delivery, but their fleets weren’t stable enough to justify building a dedicated tool for each new product. The first pass was a workflow per use case, then a specialized workflow for every new customer that needed it. That path scaled headcount, not the product.
ROLE
UX, visual design, strategy
RELEASED
2016
The strategy
What I proposed was to constrain the design to a small set of flexible components, and sell the constraint itself as the product’s advantage, not a limitation. Any job is a sequence of tasks assembled from the same component set, so a new workflow is configuration, not new design or engineering work.
I didn’t make the decision alone. It impacted how the sales team pitched the product. It required our sales team to sell “here’s what you can configure yourself” instead of “we’ll build what you need,” which is a tough sell for dealership groups and fleet providers who expect to get what they think they want rather than what they need.
Once Sales was telling the story of the constrained model, the product still had to hold up in the field, and the first versions didn’t. The first version assumed users were connected, but users lost cell signal in parking garages mid-delivery. I partnered with our engineering team to design a task list that could be retrieved and stored.
Sideflip (later renamed to “PitCrew”) in use to capture a customer signature via PDF.
App structure
The app is built for a dynamic stack of tasks with contextual instructions.
The system assigns the user to a job consisting of a series of tasks or instructions in a dynamic workflow. Each job may have contextual tangents and global tangents presented as modals.
After each task, the app asks for the next one. When there are no more tasks, the job is complete; the user moves on to the next assignment.
The iOS app scales to support iPhone and iPad screen sizes.
The app retrieves task workflows and stores them locally when the network connection is lost.
How the user accesses and steps through the task workflow.
Outcome
Porsche USA used Sideflip to launch its Porsche Drive subscription program, with no prior digital tools and no training overhead for delivery staff.
Major dealerships and OEMs use Sideflip to support high-touch consumer experiences. Porsche USA uses Sideflip to manage its deliveries for the Porsche Drive subscription rental program.
Credits: Photography by Justin Howie