Case study -- UX Discovery
Prioritizing MVP features for a connected B2B mobility platform
Automotive technology startup, Chile -- 2023
The problem
An automotive technology startup needed to validate which features to build first for their vehicle dealer management platform (Car Dealers). They had internal hypotheses but no direct evidence from the users who would actually use the system.
The risk was clear: building features the internal team considered valuable, but that dealers wouldn't use because they didn't solve their real business problems.
Research process
1. Internal stakeholder interviews
Understanding the business context, team hypotheses, and technical constraints. Goal: not starting from scratch, but identifying what was already known and what needed external validation.
2. Benchmark of similar platforms
Market reference analysis to identify existing solution patterns and avoid reinventing already-solved features.
3. Car Dealer interviews -- mixed format
3 semi-structured interviews with two deliberate parts: a generative phase (free exploration of needs and pain points) and an evaluative phase (feedback on dashboard prototypes). This captured both unarticulated needs and concrete reactions to proposed solutions.
4. Ideation workshop + structured prioritization
Identified pain points were transformed into solution ideas through collaborative ideation. The resulting 15 features were evaluated through team surveys, considering impact and effort separately, plus selecting 5 MVP candidates.
Key findings -- 7 user pain points
Ordered from most to least important according to the Car Dealers themselves:
Business value clarity
They were unclear how the platform directly contributed to their profitability.
Billing and collections management
Credit risk, payment tracking, and claims without digitization.
Integration with current processes
The platform had to fit into their operations, not replace them.
Real-time fleet visibility
They needed to know what was happening with each vehicle, when subscriptions expired, active claims.
Actionable data intelligence
Data that suggested decisions, not just displayed numbers.
Differentiator for end customers
They had no clarity on what concrete value the lessee received.
Information visualization
Declared by the dealers themselves as already solved in their internal systems. Did not require prioritization.
From 15 ideas to 5 MVP features
The 5 prioritized features directly addressed pain points 1 through 5: payment status visualization, customer financial evaluation, claims notification, kill-switch automation for theft or delinquency, and best-return vehicle visualization.
Result
The research delivered a prioritized backlog directly linked to real user needs. The product team made evidence-based development decisions, avoiding investment in features that dealers already considered secondary or were already solving with their existing systems.
Methodological learnings
Combining generative and evaluative phases in a single interview captured both unarticulated needs and reactions to concrete prototypes. This compressed the Discovery cycle without sacrificing depth.
Separating prioritization by impact and effort into distinct steps avoided the common bias of prioritizing what's easiest to build over what's most valuable to the user.
Pain point #7 (information visualization) was discarded by the dealers themselves during the process. Without research, it would have been a high priority for the internal team.
UXR SpA -- Paulina Contreras