AutoZone Retail App Refresh — Lead UX
Role
Lead UX Designer
Scope
Research · Experience Mapping · Usability Testing → Agile Delivery
Platform
iOS + Android (retail app)
Challenge
The AutoZone retail mobile app served millions of customers — DIY drivers and everyday shoppers who expected a fast, intuitive experience to find parts, check compatibility, and get back to the job at hand. By 2019, the app needed a meaningful refresh: feature gaps, inconsistent interactions, and an aging experience were creating friction for users and leaving performance on the table. The challenge was to define, map, and validate a better user experience across a complex app while working within a true agile delivery model — moving fast without sacrificing quality or practicality.
Process
01
Competitive Research & Analysis
When key product decisions arose — such as how to handle search term behavior — I went outside the organization to analyze how leading retail apps approached the same problems. This competitive benchmarking gave the product owner clear, evidence-based options to evaluate rather than relying on assumptions.
02
Experience Mapping & Technical Drawings
Rather than jumping straight to high-fidelity UI, I produced detailed technical drawings — precise, lo-fi documents that mapped user flows, decision points, micro-interactions, and edge cases. These artifacts became the shared source of truth for the team, ensuring design intent was clearly communicated to both UI designers and engineering.
03
Agile Collaboration
Worked co-located with the lead developer, allowing design and engineering decisions to happen in real time. I led and collaborated with two mid-level UI designers, guiding visual decisions while keeping the experience strategy on track. The team ran true agile practices — tight feedback loops, regular review, and continuous iteration informed by usability testing.
04
Usability & Validation
Conducted usability testing throughout the process to validate decisions and surface issues early, ensuring the experience we were building actually served the way real users thought and behaved — not just how we assumed they did.
Outcome
The two-year effort delivered measurable results: the AutoZone retail app achieved record sales in consecutive years following the refresh, along with increased downloads and improved conversion rates. Beyond the numbers, the project established a repeatable model for how design and engineering could work together — co-located, agile, and grounded in real user behavior. The experience mapping work on the Vehicle Card also uncovered opportunities that laid the groundwork for the full redesign of the Vehicle Card, completed years later. The impact of this work was recognized with a promotion to UX Manager — marking the beginning of a leadership path that has since grown to managing teams of up to eight designers and coaching senior designers into management roles of their own.
Skills & Tools
User Research
Competitive Analysis
Experience Mapping
User Flows
Information Architecture
Usability Testing
Agile
UI Direction
Technical Drawing
