BlueLine Rental - Case Study

The Ask

Create an integrated digital system that allows customers to get fast quotes on rentals, instant credit line approvals, online billing, and equipment delivery notifications.

Project Overview

My Contributions

BlueLine rents construction equipment to contractors and retail consumers. Equipment includes: aerial lifts, backhoes, skid steers, generators, and more.

BlueLine had just rebranded from Volvo Rents and was working to overcome a negative sentiment that Volvo equipment was not dependable. They added a new fleet of equipment and were positioned to re-enter the market as a new kind of construction equipment rental company.

Headed the team to win the business through proposal writing and client pitch.
‍
Led the design team from discovery through design to hand off to the development team.
‍
Deliverables and Tasks: Interviews, personas, competitive analysis, sitemaps, wireframes, user journeys, mood boards, look and feel, documentation

➊ Empathize

Rick - Superintendent

Persona

Focus Group Session

After interviewing numerous key stakeholders at BlueLine and getting a deep understanding of the business goals, we spent the next few weeks traveling across the country meeting with a wide variety of customers. These interviews consisted of one-on-one meetings, observational sessions on construction job sites and focus group sessions. Below is some of the insights we learned.

One of the many personas established through our analysis was Rick, a construction superintendent. The insights below represent the responses that we heard over and over and helped us to establish this key persona.

The surprising insight was that price was a much lower priority for the customer than availability and reliability. With this insight, we had much clearer direction in shaping the ideal customer experience.

Key Insights

What keeps you up at night?
‍• Project falling behind schedule
‍• Keeping the crew productive

Needs to Accomplish…
‍• Search for replacement equipment (if breakdown)
• Search for specialty equipment

What are your priorities…
‍• Confident equipment is available and will arrive on time
• Confident equipment will work
• Satisfied with pricing

Common Scenario

As part of our effort to build empathy for the user, brief storylines are constructed to represent a common scenario that the user might confront. The story below is a typical situation where a piece of equipment on a job site breaks down and needs a replacement.

01 ⟶

Job site running smoothly



It’s great that everything is running on time and on schedule.

02 ⟶

Equipment breaks down



Oh No… Our backhoe stopped working. If we don’t dig the foundation trench tomorrow our schedule will be pushed back a week adding $100,000 in cost.

03 ⟶

Get a replacement



Now I’ve got to scramble to find a backhoe that can get to the job site ASAP.

04 ⟶

Search online



Found one. I’m ordering now. I need a credit approval?!

Equipment delivered



Thank you.
You saved the day!

➋ Define

What We Heard

Transcript analysis

After interviewing dozens of stakeholders and customers we had hundreds of pages of notes and transcripts that were used to generate a word cloud. The most commonly recurring words and phrases were used to influence the design and functionality of deliverables. As an example, the term 'professional' helped to underscore that the customers were looking for a site that was focused on utility and should be unlike most of the construction rental equipment websites at the time which had put too much emphasis on ruggedness.

Touchpoint Journey

Touchpoint moments were identified to establish all levels of deliverables that would need to be created to construct a unified digital experience. The journey starts with our persona (Superintendent Rick) on the hunt for for a piece of equipment to dig a trench. All of the moments where Rick could have discovered BlueLine through advertising, marketing and search are identified along with the micro-moments of interaction along his journey are represented in the flow diagram below. The diagram shows a marketing funnel that moves from the initial trigger through consideration to purchase and ultimately converting the user to being an advocate. It is laid out to represent digital, traditional and social deliverables.
The diagram also helped to facilitate discussion and identify the areas of highest priority.

Feature and Functionality Competitive Audit

In order to understand the competitive landscape and discover opportunities, an audit of the top competitors was conducted. A list of features and functionality was mapped out across desktop and mobile environments. In going through this exercise, we learned that by adding instant credit approval to the app, we would give BlueLine first mover advantage.

➌ Ideate / Prototype

User Journeys

Equipment Catalog (mobile)

Below is a blown up detail from the the mobile app journey map. The full diagram (on the right) was color coded and broken out into smaller journeys like the one below for the equipment catalog journey. The diagram was created in Google Drawings so that both the design team and client could collaboratively work on the same diagram. As visual designs for screens were created, they were dropped into the diagram to replace wireframe representations of those screens. In the end, a full map of the experience with accurate designs was created.

Wireframes

Equipment Catalog (responsive)

Wireframes of key moments in the user experience were created. Below is a segment from the equipment catalog where a user is searching for a particular piece of equipment. Based on insight from our customer interviews, the experience puts equipment availability at the forefront of the experience and takes cues from comparative examples of booking services like Airbnb.

➍ Design

The website design is purposefully sparse, clean and utilitarian as we learned through customer interviews that functionality needs to appeal to a busy team on a job site. For these users, time is of the essence and there is little patience for frivolous design. Additionally, the experience for the website needed to match the mobile app so users could easily jump into an interaction without having to relearn the experience.

UI Design

Results

BlueLine was acquired for
$2.1 billion by United Rentals.

Quote Turnaround

An app for sales reps cut down the average rental pricing quote turnaround from one hour to five minutes.

Credit Approval

The new user experience also transformed a five-day credit approval process for new customers into instant online credit approval.

"This is about return on investment. Hundreds of thousands of transactions each going from one hour to five minutes is powerful."

- Frank Roth, Board Member of RB Financial Services and former VP of Sales & Marketing of BlueLine Rentals