UX and product design: New product for RAC
Overview
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I worked in-house with RAC to help launch RAC Cars, a used car platform built on the brand’s trusted reputation as “The Motorists’ Champion.”
Collaborating with product teams, funding partners, and a range of stakeholders—including BAs, developers, designers, content teams, third-party data suppliers, and agency partners—we created a seamless, user-first experience that aligned with RAC’s brand vision and built trust with new users online.
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RAC Cars was a brand-new proposition for the RAC—a standalone car-buying and selling platform. With a lot of high-level stakeholders involved (including a few Top Gear fans with some pretty nice cars), one of the first and most important challenges was shifting the focus away from internal preferences and onto the actual end users.
Step 1: Securing Business Buy-In & Understanding the User
To make sure we were building something for real people, not just the boardroom, I collaborated with project sponsors, designers, and development teams to validate user needs and technical feasibility.
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Given that this was a new sub-brand, I created a tone of voice guide for RAC Cars to distinguish it from the core RAC offering. With limited budget for formal testing, I developed an online response form to test tone of voice with potential users—ensuring we were speaking in a language that resonated.
Step 2: Journey Mapping, Stakeholder Workshops & Agency Alignment
I kicked off a sketching workshop with key stakeholders and product owners to align on the user journey before diving into any UI detail.
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An external agency had already produced some slick designs—including a tool to show car depreciation over time. While impressive, user feedback showed it wasn’t something the core audience actually needed. Plus, the dev effort wasn’t justifiable.
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Working collaboratively with the agency and stakeholders, I helped prioritise which features to keep and which to drop. I then mapped out a simple, clear user journey and aligned this with brochureware and landing page designs to set the tone for the broader UI.
Step 3: Detail Workshops & Early IA Validation
To get into the nitty-gritty, I ran a second sketching workshop with internal stakeholders—this time focused on more nuanced interactions. By involving the right people early (and agreeing on a Product Owner), we resolved many of the questions that would typically arise later in development—saving both time and budget.
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I also ran a card sorting session with people outside the RAC to inform the information architecture, and presented those insights back to the business.
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The workshop itself was low-tech but effective: we mapped the journey out on paper, stuck screens around the room, and walked through them with stakeholders and designers to align expectations.
Step 4: Annotated Frames & Development Handoff
With full business buy-in and a user-validated direction, I produced flat, annotated frames focused on functionality—prioritising things like SEO, filtering, and user account creation over visual polish (which would come later in collaboration with the design agency).
Key features included the ability to save and favourite cars, plus integration with SEO and PPC teams to support advertising efforts. These elements might not have been flashy, but they were essential—and incredibly satisfying to piece together.