{"id":469,"date":"2026-06-02T16:11:08","date_gmt":"2026-06-02T10:41:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.jogendradesigns.com\/?p=469"},"modified":"2026-06-09T12:58:02","modified_gmt":"2026-06-09T07:28:02","slug":"castrol-connect","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jogendradesigns.com\/?p=469","title":{"rendered":"Castrol connect"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Designing a trustworthy car servicing platform for India<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

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, enabling users to discover, compare, and book services across a fragmented network of workshops.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Problem statement<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

The challenge extended beyond building a booking flow. Users struggled to understand what the product was, trust unfamiliar workshops, and navigate complex service decisions. Meanwhile, the business prioritised early lead capture and rapid network expansion over clarity and user control.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This created a fundamental design problem:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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How might we design a trustworthy, end-to-end car servicing experience that balances user clarity and confidence with operational and business constraints across consumers, workshops, and Castrol operations?<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

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My Role & Ownership<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Role:<\/strong> Lead Product Designer
Platform:<\/strong> Web & Mobile
Team:<\/strong> Cross-functional – Product, Engineering (UK, India), QA, Business stakeholders
Tools:<\/strong> Figma, Mural\/FigJam, Azure, Microsoft Copilot<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I joined Castrol Connect as the Lead Product Designer<\/strong>, initially responsible for enabling a rapid MVP launch and later evolving the product into a scalable, strategy-driven platform. I owned end-to-end design across web and mobile \u2014 from research and information architecture through interaction design, design system, and post-launch measurement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Product scope excercise<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

How my role evolved across three phases<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Phase 1: MVP Launch (Execution under constraint)<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The initial brief was to ship fast for the Indian market using an existing global codebase. My focus was adapting the experience to Indian user needs, ensuring the end-to-end booking journey worked functionally, and collaborating tightly with engineering to hit the launch date. I was execution-heavy here, shaping decisions in real time within hard technical constraints.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Phase 2: Post-MVP (Validation & Gap diagnosis)<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Once the product was live and showing early traction, I initiated a structured research programme to identify core experience gaps. I ran 8-10 discovery interviews and usability sessions across both consumer and workshop sides, an effort I planned, moderated, and synthesised myself. This phase shifted my role from delivery to diagnosis.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Phase 3: Strategic Design (Ownership & Direction)<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I took full ownership of UX strategy, product direction, and the experience roadmap. I defined the design principles that guided every subsequent decision, established analytics instrumentation to track 15+ experience quality metrics post-launch, and aligned design decisions directly to business OKRs in stakeholder reviews.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Discovery<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

What I set out to learn<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

I ran 8\u201310 research sessions<\/strong> combining discovery interviews and usability testing, using a think-aloud protocol to capture real-time reactions across two key task flows:<\/p>\n\n\n\n