CarGurus

When I joined CarGurus' B2B team, there was no UX practice in place — no research, no design process, no shared understanding of what dealers actually needed. I started by running user research workshops and design sessions to surface assumptions, behaviors, and business goals for the dealer product suite. The real work was building the muscle, not just the screens.

Our focus was the Dealer Pricing Tool — a core product with real churn risk. We needed to deeply understand customer pain points: accessibility issues, workflow friction, and frustrations that were driving dealers away. I also saw an opportunity to introduce a design system built for B2B needs, rather than forcing the existing consumer-focused system into a space it wasn't designed for.

The business goals were clear: increase revenue, reduce churn, and build trust with a dealer audience that had been treated as secondary to consumers. We needed to earn that trust through better experiences, not just better features.

Empathy building was central to the approach. By understanding how dealers actually interacted with pricing tools — not how we assumed they did — we designed dashboards that told a clearer visual story and reduced decision-making friction.

Through research and dealer interviews, we built an accessible component library true to the company brand but designed for B2B complexity. For the first time, dealers had a responsive experience across mobile, tablet, and desktop.

Partnering with data science, we created precise data visualization elements that turned raw marketplace data into actionable insights. The prototyping sessions with dealers were invaluable — their feedback defined the scope, and the iterative process delivered a product that actually worked for the people using it every day.