Product Information Management Tool

Nissan

Product Information Management tool

This tool is used to author & manage market-specific data for all Nissan models. The textual data created using this tool is displayed on the website and is the base for the 3D configurator.

My Role

Product Designer ( PoC to Rollout )

Duration

Q2 FY23 - Q1 FY24

Q3 FY24 - Q1 FY25 (Me+1 UI designer)

Business Problem.

An external vendor manages Nissan car model data to generate files used in the 3D configurator on the website. All the authoring is done in Excel and managed in JIRA.

Remove the external vendor and keep all model data internal.
Data is managed in Excel, Outlook and JIRA.

Approach to Solution

Designed and defined the workflow, information, and user archetypes. Propose future product positioning and strategy for how the product can enhance both upstream and downstream processes.

Conducted multiple discovery sessions with stakeholders across regions, broadly asking questions as mapped above on the as-is process to gather insights and takeaways to create the following high-level to-be process of user archetypes.

The high-level proposal was an outcome of over 8 weeks of intensive discovery sessions with the Europe and Middle East marketing teams. Entering data in the portal is the major activity to be performed, for which a deep understanding of the information to be authored was created as follows.

Based on the data, 7 types of data entry were identified as below, with each type requiring a specific type of data entry. Ranging from typing in data in fields to creating conditions and constraints.

Type 1: Version name.

Type 2: Technical specs like colour, capacity, etc.

Type 3: Packages.

Type 4: Constraints.

Type 5: Price.

Type 6: Accessories.

Type 7: EIM.

Solution

With wireframes prepared, we conducted multiple user tests and discussions with stakeholders and potential users of the platform in diverse regions to test multilingual input, roll out refinements, and updates in subsequent releases, and facilitate market onboarding.

As the product has multiple types of authoring, picking up the section that was most challenging of all, involving the creation of conditions using and/or and implies/excludes.

Constraint

This was the most challenging type of data authoring for users. The conditions, as illustrated below, need to be authored.

Iteration 1 was straightforward, as the user needed to select each spec/version, and it was easy for the backend and frontend teams to implement. This solution was for release 1, when the market requirements and constraints were simpler and consisted of fewer than 20.

The authoring is done in the pop-up with the following data, as shown above.

Iteration 1: Constrain detail page. The data authored using the generator was displayed, which was difficult to read and understand.

This can be considered an improvement over iteration 1, as it attempts to group implies/exclude as main and as a subgrou to the final approach.

During testing with users in European markets, there was a blocker as the constraints to be created were longer and more data-intensive. A study was conducted on the new types of data authoring in markets, and the following direction was adopted in Iteration 2

Revised the approach with new requirements and collaborated with multiple markets to reach a common understanding of the 2 types of constrains. This was simplified with easy-to-understand language and multi-select options, which streamlined the whole process and generated multiple constraints in a single workflow.

Generic Constrain