SureCritic platform

SureCritic is an automotive customer experience management platform that helps dealerships understand customer sentiment and operational performance through surveys, reviews, and dealer interactions. The platform aggregates large volumes of data intended to help businesses identify trends, improve customer satisfaction, and make informed operational decisions.

At the alpha stage, however, much of this value was difficult for customers to access. Navigation patterns were inconsistent, key insights were buried within complex workflows, and the platform lacked responsiveness across devices. As a result, users struggled to translate available data into actionable insights, limiting engagement and reducing the product’s perceived value.

I was brought in to redefine the product experience and establish a scalable design foundation that could surface insights more clearly while supporting future growth. By restructuring navigation, introducing a modular design system, and creating a more cohesive and responsive interface, the platform evolved into a more intuitive, data-driven experience that improved user engagement and helped position SureCritic to win larger enterprise clients.

Responsibilities

Product Design

Client

SureCritic

$1M

In new business

15 hrs/wk saved

By design system

26%

Increase in user engagement

SureCritic Dashboard

Challenges

Performance with data-heavy workflows

The platform needed to support large data sets without compromising speed or usability. It was important to provide visual feedback to the user when data was loading.

Limited user access

As an external consultant without direct access to end users, research and validation relied on close collaboration with subject matter experts, requiring iterative design cycles to balance business goals.

Minimal brand palette

SureCritic’s existing brand colors were minimal and not optimized for a digital SaaS experience. Expanding the palette while maintaining brand integrity was essential.

Goals

01

Reposition SureCritic’s platform as a modern, industry leading customer experience tool capable of supporting enterprise clients and accelerating business growth.

02

Craft a premium, data-driven platform experience with a modular toolkit that enhances user engagement.

03

Establish a scalable design system that ensures visual and functional consistency across the platform, streamlining development and feature innovation.

Discovery

After conducting stakeholder interviews with COO and CIO I surfaced high level goals for the next iteration of the platform. It was important to create a system that was flexible and could support various pieces of data. The business users needed key insights to be surfaced and have the ability to easily understand how they compare to the competition. This platform needed to be responsive so users could keep up to speed with insights on the go.

The before

I performed a high-level heuristic evaluation of the software by examining the interface for consistency and usability issues. I found problems with the navigation structure and overall presentation of data. Before, messaging for error handling was confusing and not customer facing.

Before Design

Interpreting user research

Once I understood the user’s wants and needs, I created two key user personas. The corporate user manages multiple regions of businesses and needs to quickly understand how they are performing compared to one another. The other persona is a single business owner who is only concerned with the details of their specific business.

Woman posing for business head shot

Jessica

Age: 46

Occupation: Regional Manager of an automotive company

Status: Married

Location: Detroit, MI

Pain points

Jessica has fragmented data across the 25 dealerships. She is juggling multiple data sources, making it difficult to get a comprehensive, real-time view of each business.

She has a lack of clear performance insights. Jessica struggles to quickly assess how each dealership is performing, requiring a manual effort to compile sales numbers and identify trends.

Goals

She wants to reduce time spent on calls and emails. Instead of constantly reaching out to dealerships for updates, Jessica needs a centralized dashboard to monitor performance at a glance.

Jessica wants a single platform where she can monitor customer feedback and reviews from multiple sources, enabling her to proactively address issues and improve dealership reputation.

Business man in office building

Dave

Age: 54

Occupation: Owner of two dealerships

Status: Married

Location: Chicago, IL

Pain points

Tracking customer reviews scattered across multiple platforms is time-consuming and inefficient, making it difficult for Dave to monitor his dealership’s reputation and respond to customer feedback promptly.

After a sale or service, there's no easy way to re-engage customers. Dave knows this is leading to missed opportunities for building loyalty and driving repeat business.

Goals

Dave wants a clear, side-by-side comparison of how his dealership stacks up against competitors in the area, helping him make data-driven business decisions.

Instead of jumping between multiple tools, Dave needs one centralized platform where he can instantly see his dealership’s performance across all key channels, from customer feedback to sales metrics.

Competitive research

As I was gathering background research it was important to look at competitors in the CX space. After seeing what key players were doing I found that all of their platforms were responsive. They were presenting data in a more visual way and had an easier navigation pattern.

Competitive Research

Design system

To ensure consistency and scalability across the platform, I developed an extensible design system built from atomic elements that could be combined to create cohesive, flexible components.

Page Wireframes

Dashboard tile framework

The new dashboard design presents data in a rich visual format with over twenty different custom tiles. They clearly display business performance over time while comparing other competition in the region.

Dashboard Components

Flexible table layouts

Since so much of the software was data heavy, an important piece of the platform was a flexible table system that could accommodate simple tables with rows and columns. It also provided conditional highlighting, charts, side scrolling and the ability to elevate key metrics.

Table Design
Table Design

Messaging platform

I designed a messaging experience that enabled businesses to communicate directly with their customers in real time. The interface made it easy to manage ongoing conversations, track message status, send images, videos, and files that automatically attach to a customer’s history for context. By allowing multiple team members to respond from the same thread, the system improved response speed, reduced blockers, and kept active appointments moving forward. This feature transformed fragmented communication into a single, organized workflow that increased operational efficiency.

Messaging interface

Large component library

I created a large component library that helped drive consistency throughout the application. Once these were built out they allowed for rapid development of new features with in the platform.

Design System Components

Outcomes

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$1M in new business

The redesigned platform helped position SureCritic as a mature, enterprise ready product, contributing to a long term contract with Hyundai of America driving sustained revenue.

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Saved dev team 15 hrs/wk

Introducing a scalable design system reduced rework, enabling faster feature delivery, allowing the team to ship updates in weeks instead of months.

Users up icon
User engagement up 26%

A responsive, data-focused experience improved accessibility across devices, making it easier for users to access insights and engage with the platform as part of their daily workflow.