Castrol connect

Castrol Connect set out to bridge the gap between Castrol’s strong brand in automotive lubricants and its low visibility as a digital car servicing platform, by enabling users to discover, compare, and book services across a fragmented network of workshops.

Problem statement

However, the challenge extended beyond building a booking flow –
users struggled to understand what the product was, trust unfamiliar workshops, and navigate complex service decisions, while the business prioritized early lead capture and rapid network expansion over clarity and control.

This created a fundamental design problem:

How might we design a trustworthy, end-to-end car servicing experience that balances user clarity and confidence with operational and business constraints across multiple stakeholders- consumers, workshops, and Castrol operations?

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My Role & Ownership

I joined Castrol Connect as the Lead Product Designer, initially tasked with enabling a rapid MVP launch and later evolving the product into a scalable, strategy-driven platform.

Scope evolution

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My Design Approach

1. Understand Reality

• Go beyond assumptions — run interviews, usability sessions
• Understand user behavior and business constraints together

2. Frame the Right Problem

• Move from surface issues to root causes
• Identify tensions between:
  • user trust
  • business goals
  • system limitations

3. Design Within Constraints

• Accept constraints as part of the system:
  • existing codebase
  • business priorities
  • operational realities

4. Validate & Evolve

• Test with real users
• Observe behavior, not opinions
• Iterate based on:
  • friction points
  • drop-offs
  • confusion patterns

I don’t treat design as a fixed process —
I adapt my approach based on the complexity of the problem, constraints, and stage of the product.

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Core Tension

While users needed clarity, trust, and control to adopt the platform, the product was shaped by business priorities focused on rapid lead capture and scaling the workshop network.

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Discovery

Understanding behavior across both sides of the ecosystem—customers booking services and workshops delivering them

Research Approach

Conducted 8–10 sessions combining:

• Discovery interviews → uncovering real-world behaviors and decision-making
• Usability testing → observing how users interact with Castrol Connect in task-based scenarios

Method:

• Think‑aloud protocol to capture real-time reactions
• Task flows:
  • Booking journey: discover → compare → book
  • Workshop management: create jobs → manage schedule → communicate updates
• Focus:
  • Consumers with low awareness of Castrol Connect
  • Workshops operating with partially digital, highly manual systems

What I set out to learn

Key Behavioral Signals

Both customers and workshops rely on existing trust-based, informal systems, making adoption of a structured digital platform fundamentally a trust and behavior change problem—not just a usability problem.

Key Insights

Users struggled not because of complexity alone—but because clarity and trust were missing from the start

1. Clarity (Entry Barrier)

Users didn’t understand what Castrol Connect is or why to use it.
→ Most dropped off before exploring further

2. Trust (Adoption Barrier)

Users hesitated to trust the platform with their vehicle and data.
→ Weak workshop signals + early commitment reduced confidence

3. Decision Complexity (Conversion Barrier)

Users struggled to compare options and make confident choices
→ Defaulted to cheapest or familiar option

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Design Direction

Shifting from a feature-led flow to a trust-driven experience

The core opportunity was not adding more functionality, but making the experience understandable, trustworthy, and easy to act on.

1. Clarity → Make Purpose Obvious Early

Users consistently struggled to understand what Castrol Connect actually offers and how it differs from their existing workflow. Many interpreted it as generic brand content rather than a service platform, which limited exploration. This indicated a need to clearly communicate the product’s value and context before asking users to take action.

2. Trust → Delay Commitment & Strengthen Signals

Even when users progressed, there was strong hesitation around sharing personal details and trusting unfamiliar workshops. Early requests for phone numbers and unclear credibility signals created friction at key moments. This pointed to the need for a more progressive trust-building approach—allowing users to explore first while making workshop credibility more explicit and meaningful.

3. Decision-Making → Reduce Cognitive Load

Users who reached the selection stage struggled to confidently compare service options due to long, undifferentiated information. Instead of evaluating choices meaningfully, they defaulted to price or familiarity. This highlighted the need to simplify decision-making by reducing overload and making key differences easier to understand.

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Key Design Decisions

Translating user friction into focused product changes

1. Problem: Users didn’t understand the product

Change: Introduced clearer value communication early

The entry experience was reworked to better explain what Castrol Connect offers and how it differs from existing service options. Instead of generic messaging, the focus shifted to making the platform’s purpose explicit before asking users to act.

👉 Impact: Users could orient themselves faster and were more likely to explore the platform instead of dropping off early

2. Problem: Early commitment reduced trust

Change: Delayed data capture and aligned it with intent

Users were being asked for phone numbers and verification before building confidence. The flow was adapted to allow users to explore service options first, with data capture aligned closer to booking intent.

👉 Impact: Reduced hesitation at early steps and created a more natural progression toward conversion

3. Problem: Workshops lacked credibility

Change: Strengthened trust signals across the experience

Workshop listings and profiles were improved to surface clearer information and make credibility more visible. Effort was directed toward making quality indicators easier to understand and less ambiguous.

👉 Impact: Users felt more confident evaluating unfamiliar workshops instead of defaulting to known ones

4. Problem: Users struggled to make decisions

→ Change: Simplified service comparison and reduced overload

Service packages were restructured to highlight key differences instead of presenting long, undifferentiated lists. The focus shifted from showing everything to helping users understand what actually matters.

👉 Impact: Users could make quicker, more confident decisions instead of relying on price or abandoning the flow

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Solution

The solution reframed the consumer journey around three priorities: helping users understand what Castrol Connect is, building trust before asking for commitment, and making service decisions easier to evaluate. Research showed that users often misunderstood the product, hesitated around unfamiliar workshops, and struggled with text-heavy choices.

So the design focused on three shifts:

• Clearer entry context so users could quickly understand what the platform offers and why it is relevant.
• Progressive trust-building by reducing early friction such as premature data capture and making workshop credibility more visible.
• Simplified comparison so services and packages felt easier to scan, compare, and choose with confidence.

The overall move was from a feature-led flow to a journey designed around clarity, trust, and decision confidence.

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Validation & Iteration

Validation showed that usability improvements helped users move through the flow more smoothly, but did not fully resolve the deeper trust barriers around the product. Users were better able to follow the journey, yet many still evaluated Castrol Connect against authorized service centers, known mechanics, or existing habits.

What testing confirmed most clearly was:

• Understanding improved, because users could orient themselves more easily in the flow.
• Progression improved, because reduced friction helped users continue further into the journey.
• Trust remained the biggest blocker, especially when users compared the platform against familiar offline alternatives.

This made iteration less about polishing screens and more about reducing uncertainty and strengthening credibility across the experience.

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Reflection & Strategic Learnings

The strongest learning from this project was that trust is not created by interface quality alone. It is shaped by product clarity, business decisions, workshop credibility, and operational consistency. Even when usability improved, users still hesitated if those broader signals were weak.

Three strategic learnings stood out:

• UX cannot compensate for weak product positioning many users still did not understand what Castrol Connect was supposed to be.
• Business priorities shape experience quality decisions like early lead capture directly affected trust and flow.
• Better usability does not automatically change behavior users and workshops were already operating through familiar, trust-based systems.

The project ultimately shifted the challenge from designing screens to designing a more credible system.