Auction Management
Live Auction Day & Bid Capture Tool
A tablet app to conduct live auction events and capture bid activity data
Principal Designer @ Auction.com
Balsamiq | Sketch | InVision
Principal Designer @ Auction.com
Balsamiq | Sketch | InVision
Background
Auction.com conducts 60 live auctions events across the United States every day. The existing internal tablet application used in the live auction environments failed to deliver an efficient experience. Field staff responsible for setting up and managing events were hindered by numerous pain points and were unable to conduct their tasks efficiently. Beyond their general frustrations, auctioneers were unable to adequately capture essential live auction data to provide valuable reporting to clients.
Goals & Rational
- Streamline workflows for field staff
- Increase quality of live auction bidding data
- Build foundation for external partnerships
The team wanted to reduce the burden of managing live auctions and allow the field staff to focus on providing a better customer experience for investors. Capturing live bidding activity more effectively would increase the quality of auction data collected and consequently the value proposition to sellers.
Live Auction Context
We gathered insights on the live auction environment, various pain points and the need for an application that truly supports the field staff’s workflows and objectives.
Design Studio
The insights and problems from the observations and interviews were brought to a cross-disciplinary group to explore a wide set of possible solutions.
Telling the Story
Storyboarding the context and flow of our proposed solutions provided the necessary colour and narrative to communicate a more empathetic and compelling story.
Task Focused Workflows
A hub and spoke architecture surfaced the various task-based workflows in the appropriate context throughout the auction day.
Wireframes
Low fidelity wireframes refined our proposals and allowed us to gather more concrete feedback from field staff and have more focused discussion with stakeholders.
Results
Rolling out the application into the live auction environment resulted in an immediate lift in operational efficiency. We decreased friction through all critical auction management workflows and increased the ability to capture live bid data. The user-centred design approach was evident through the quick adoption of the application by field staff without any extensive training and the high user satisfaction reported back from the field.
Outcomes
- Reduced required steps across the app by 30% and clicks on critical workflows by 60% while adding significantly more functionality
- Bid tracker matching auctioneer workflow increased bid data capture from under 5% in some counties to over 95%
- Successful pilot rollout of application to initial external partners
Thank You Kindly
