Notifications
At Shopmonkey, auto shops currently face inefficiencies due to a lack of centralized access to critical updates from both employees and customers. This forces staff to manually monitor various platforms and processes, resulting in missed information, delayed responses, and significant administrative burden.
A notification system provides timely, relevant, and actionable alerts to significantly improve workflow efficiency and communication across shops.
Success was measured by:
Decreased time spent on manual checks (e.g., observed reduction in service advisors checking job boards/messages every X minutes).
Reduced delays in critical actions (e.g., faster customer responses, quicker approval-to-work transitions).
Increased team accountability (e.g., fewer instances of "missed messages" or unaddressed tasks).
Improved team satisfaction without the use of plug-ins like Slack
RESPONSIBILITIESInformation hierarchy, visual design, UX design, user testing, prototyping, stakeholder presentations, cross functional collaboration, user research
ROLELead Product Designer
DURATION2021 - 3 months
TEAM1 director of design, 1 head of engineering, 2 engineers, 1 QA, 1 designer
How might we accelerate shops’ workflow by reducing reliance on manual checks and verbal updates?
After receiving about 600 upvotes in Canny for this feature, we started by defining the problem and goal by interviewing 10 auto shop owners to understand their pain points.
Turning existing email notifications to in-app
As a V1 deployment of the feature, I worked with our product manager to set the scope of the project. It was crucial shops get notified of all notifications related to their estimates. We started writing all possible notifications and grouping them by app area and reach capabilities.
Notifications Panel
I learned from users they want succinct notifications that show the date, subject, and app area it relates to. Making sure it was accessible on both platforms was important for technicians that are always on the move and need to know their next job.
Allowing employees to opt in/out of notifications
The main feedback we heard was service writers and technicians only need notifications related to the tickets they’re working on and not the entire shops’. I integrated that into the user profile.
Admin level: Assigning notifications
The main feedback we heard was service writers and technicians only need notifications related to the tickets they’re working on and not the entire shops’. I integrated that into the user profile.