This case study has been abridged and anonymized to protect confidential information.
A more detailed walkthrough is available during a private interview setting.
A more detailed walkthrough is available during a private interview setting.
Background
While at General Motors, I worked across customer experience, service design, and mixed-methods research initiatives focused on improving how customers discover, adopt, use, and receive support for GM products and services.
While at General Motors, I worked across customer experience, service design, and mixed-methods research initiatives focused on improving how customers discover, adopt, use, and receive support for GM products and services.
My work connected complex experiences across vehicle ownership, mobile apps, dealers, advisors, support teams, EV onboarding, GM Energy, OnStar, loyalty, and emerging vehicle technologies. Across these initiatives, I helped teams frame ambiguous problems, understand customer behaviors, identify friction, and translate insights into journeys, concepts, service models, and roadmap recommendations.
Challenge
As GM expanded into connected services, EV ecosystems, home energy, loyalty, mobile experiences, and new vehicle technologies, customers increasingly moved across many touchpoints — vehicle interfaces, mobile apps, websites, dealers, advisors, support teams, CRM communications, and EV/home energy experiences.
As GM expanded into connected services, EV ecosystems, home energy, loyalty, mobile experiences, and new vehicle technologies, customers increasingly moved across many touchpoints — vehicle interfaces, mobile apps, websites, dealers, advisors, support teams, CRM communications, and EV/home energy experiences.
The challenge was understanding how these touchpoints connected across the broader GM ecosystem and helping Product, Design, Engineering, Marketing, Care, Dealers, and other teams align around a more holistic customer experience.
Framing the work
Across many initiatives, the central questions became:
How might we help customers confidently discover, adopt, use, and get support for GM’s growing ecosystem of vehicle, digital, energy, loyalty, and connected service experiences
- and -
How might we combine customer research, behavioral signals, and operational insights to align internal teams around the journeys, systems, and support models required to deliver these experiences consistently?
Across many initiatives, the central questions became:
How might we help customers confidently discover, adopt, use, and get support for GM’s growing ecosystem of vehicle, digital, energy, loyalty, and connected service experiences
- and -
How might we combine customer research, behavioral signals, and operational insights to align internal teams around the journeys, systems, and support models required to deliver these experiences consistently?
Focus Areas
My work supported initiatives across:
•Customer Loyalty & GM Rewards
•GM Energy & Home Energy Management
•New Vehicle Features & Safety
•Mobile App and Digital Ownership Experiences
•EV Launches, Vehicle Onboarding & Self-Serve Experiences
•Customer Shopping, Purchase, Ownership & Retention Journeys
•Advisor Tools and Support Experiences
•OnStar and Connected Services
•Advanced Design and Future Concepts
My work supported initiatives across:
•Customer Loyalty & GM Rewards
•GM Energy & Home Energy Management
•New Vehicle Features & Safety
•Mobile App and Digital Ownership Experiences
•EV Launches, Vehicle Onboarding & Self-Serve Experiences
•Customer Shopping, Purchase, Ownership & Retention Journeys
•Advisor Tools and Support Experiences
•OnStar and Connected Services
•Advanced Design and Future Concepts
My Role, Approach & Research Inputs
I partnered with leaders, product managers, designers, researchers, engineers, marketing teams, dealers, advisors, and support teams to connect service design, mixed-methods research, systems thinking, and facilitation.
I partnered with leaders, product managers, designers, researchers, engineers, marketing teams, dealers, advisors, and support teams to connect service design, mixed-methods research, systems thinking, and facilitation.
My work included:
•Working with key stakeholders to establish scope, curate design thinking and doing timelines that will get the team to an end-result, and establish key targets and milestones that will combine research, empathy, and design deliverables (i.e. wireframes, storyboards, journeys, mockups, etc.) that will help de-risk inform future decisions and strategies.
•Coordinating and conducting various mixed-methods research such as exploratory/generative/foundational interviews, in-field and on-location studies, card sorting, competitive benchmarking, customer surveys, remote testing, a/b testing, concept testing, RITE testing, and more.
•Synthesizing qualitative interviews, field research, SME interviews, VOC, NPS/CSAT, survey findings, loyalty indicators, behavioral signals, competitive research, and third-party studies.
•Translating customer behaviors, mental models, pain points, support expectations, and adoption barriers into opportunity areas and experience priorities.
•Developing journey maps, service blueprints, experience flows, storyboards, low-fidelity concepts, and future-state models.
•Facilitating workshops and co-creation sessions with executives, managers, and leaders to align cross-functional teams around customer problems, moments of truth, use cases, risks, tradeoffs, success metrics, and roadmap foundations.
•Helping teams balance customer needs, business goals, technical feasibility, operational constraints, and delivery timelines.
•Working with key stakeholders to establish scope, curate design thinking and doing timelines that will get the team to an end-result, and establish key targets and milestones that will combine research, empathy, and design deliverables (i.e. wireframes, storyboards, journeys, mockups, etc.) that will help de-risk inform future decisions and strategies.
•Coordinating and conducting various mixed-methods research such as exploratory/generative/foundational interviews, in-field and on-location studies, card sorting, competitive benchmarking, customer surveys, remote testing, a/b testing, concept testing, RITE testing, and more.
•Synthesizing qualitative interviews, field research, SME interviews, VOC, NPS/CSAT, survey findings, loyalty indicators, behavioral signals, competitive research, and third-party studies.
•Translating customer behaviors, mental models, pain points, support expectations, and adoption barriers into opportunity areas and experience priorities.
•Developing journey maps, service blueprints, experience flows, storyboards, low-fidelity concepts, and future-state models.
•Facilitating workshops and co-creation sessions with executives, managers, and leaders to align cross-functional teams around customer problems, moments of truth, use cases, risks, tradeoffs, success metrics, and roadmap foundations.
•Helping teams balance customer needs, business goals, technical feasibility, operational constraints, and delivery timelines.
Outputs & Impact
•Developed 30+ end-to-end customer experience artifacts, including journey maps, service blueprints, user flows, storyboards, experience frameworks, and future-state concepts.
•Helped teams define North Star experiences across connected vehicle, EV ownership, loyalty, home energy, mobile, support, and service ecosystems.
•Created shared views of complex customer journeys that connected frontstage touchpoints with backstage processes, systems, teams, data signals, and operational dependencies.
•Informed product, design, engineering, marketing, care, dealer, and support teams with research-backed experience priorities and roadmap recommendations.
•Helped define success metrics, product requirements, risks, tradeoffs, and implementation considerations to move ideas from exploration toward delivery.
•Supported customer experience improvements across onboarding, adoption, engagement, support, retention, and loyalty journeys.
•Helped teams identify which problems were rooted in customer understanding, which were operational or channel breakdowns, and which required clearer product, service, or support models.
•Developed 30+ end-to-end customer experience artifacts, including journey maps, service blueprints, user flows, storyboards, experience frameworks, and future-state concepts.
•Helped teams define North Star experiences across connected vehicle, EV ownership, loyalty, home energy, mobile, support, and service ecosystems.
•Created shared views of complex customer journeys that connected frontstage touchpoints with backstage processes, systems, teams, data signals, and operational dependencies.
•Informed product, design, engineering, marketing, care, dealer, and support teams with research-backed experience priorities and roadmap recommendations.
•Helped define success metrics, product requirements, risks, tradeoffs, and implementation considerations to move ideas from exploration toward delivery.
•Supported customer experience improvements across onboarding, adoption, engagement, support, retention, and loyalty journeys.
•Helped teams identify which problems were rooted in customer understanding, which were operational or channel breakdowns, and which required clearer product, service, or support models.
Outcome
My human-centered and service design approaches helped GM teams move from siloed initiatives and fragmented inputs toward a more connected understanding of the customer experience. By combining mixed-methods research, service design, systems thinking, and cross-functional facilitation, I helped teams clarify what problems to solve, where experiences were breaking down, and how future products, services, and support models could better connect across the GM ecosystem.
Rather than focusing only on isolated touchpoints, the work helped define more holistic experience strategies that considered the relationship between customers, vehicles, mobile apps, dealers, advisors, digital platforms, support teams, behavioral signals, and emerging services.
My human-centered and service design approaches helped GM teams move from siloed initiatives and fragmented inputs toward a more connected understanding of the customer experience. By combining mixed-methods research, service design, systems thinking, and cross-functional facilitation, I helped teams clarify what problems to solve, where experiences were breaking down, and how future products, services, and support models could better connect across the GM ecosystem.
Rather than focusing only on isolated touchpoints, the work helped define more holistic experience strategies that considered the relationship between customers, vehicles, mobile apps, dealers, advisors, digital platforms, support teams, behavioral signals, and emerging services.
Case study notes
This page provides a high-level overview of my time at GM. In interviews, I can walk through specific examples, including research planning, synthesis, journey artifacts, workshop design, service blueprints, and how recommendations influenced product, service, and experience decisions.
This page provides a high-level overview of my time at GM. In interviews, I can walk through specific examples, including research planning, synthesis, journey artifacts, workshop design, service blueprints, and how recommendations influenced product, service, and experience decisions.
