Unifying notification preferences

Role
Product Designer

Client
Driveway

Year
2024

Lithia Motors’ Driveway is an online resource for shopping for new or used vehicles across Lithia dealerships nationwide. My Driveway serves as a hub within the Driveway ecosystem for users to manage their vehicle ownership. Users can import vehicle details, schedule service, track vehicle valuation, and more.

GOALS

Allow users to set default Lithia Store notification preferences within MyDriveway if available. Users should be able to manage all their notifications from a single platform.

  1. Enable users to update their Lithia Store and Driveway notification preferences from MyDriveway. Ensure that any changes made are synchronized with the EDS.

  2. Allow users to view store names for their preference settings. Users should know which store their preferences apply to.

  3. Provide an option for users to opt-out of mail per store. Users can choose not to receive mail from specific stores.

  4. Provide an option for users to opt-out of calls (home, work, cell) per store. Users can choose not to receive calls from specific stores.

  5. Provide an option for users to opt-out of emails per store. Users can choose not to receive emails from specific stores.

  6. Provide an option for users to opt-out of texts per store. Users can choose not to receive texts from specific stores.

  7. Provide an option for users to universally opt-out per store. Users can choose to opt-out of all forms of communication from specific stores.

    The list of notifications is: 

    • Calls

    • Text

    • Mail 

    • Email

PROBLEM STATEMENT

Notification preferences were not synchronized across different platforms — ie, a user could not opt out of communications for specific dealerships. This led to inconsistencies and user confusion. We needed My Driveway to become the source of truth for notification preferences and to ensure that notifications were aligned.

Design Process

The existing notification preferences page had a section addressing Driveway marketing emails that would stay in place, so the focus was to provide a clear way for the user to set their notifications per dealership.

Research

I started by investigating the notification preferences pages for websites I already frequented. Squarespace, Pinterest, and Etsy had pages that heavily relied on toggles, emphasizing email notifications.

Lo-Fi

As I outlined my thoughts for structuring these dealership preferences, I quickly found that the amount of toggles looked overwhelming. As I iterated, functionality came into play — I met with engineering and learned that we would need to include a save button to record the user’s changes. With this new knowledge, toggles were off the table — I would only use them if the actions were immediately applied. 

Hi-Fi

Once the design reached the Hi-Fi phase, I found the sweet spot of balancing checkboxes for the modes of communication (phone, email, etc.) while including toggles to turn notifications on/off for an entire dealership.

Another iteration point was whether or not to use cards within the design. I tried several versions without cards but found that the cards did an excellent job of holding dealership information together. For the desktop version, empty space was a concern for stakeholders, which I solved by wrapping the cards side-by-side as the screen size increased. 

Additionally, engineering requested success/fail toasts to display after users saved their information in case of delays or errors. With this addition, the design was ready to move to Design Spec and be reviewed for handoff to engineering.