Feedback Tool
Background
DrivingSales Vendor Ratings is a system for car dealership professionals to rate their vendors' products anonymously. This provides valuable insight and feedback for other professionals looking to buy products and services. It also provides honest feedback for the vendors.
All ratings are verified over the phone by DrivingSales before published publically.
Vendors can pay for priority or "sponsored" placement on the Vendor Ratings website. This makes their product listings more visible to a car dealer and makes their contact info easily available.
Project
Vendor clients paying for sponsorships are also given the ability to address a rating from an anonymous dealer... at least they were in the previous version of the website. This feature was cut from the complete redesign MVP. This was probably accidental as this feature is tied to revenue. :/
The feedback tool this time around was supposed to:
- Allow anyone to flag a rating for moderation (the review appears to be for the wrong product or wrong vendor, or the rewiew is inappropriate / slanderous)
- Allow sponsoring vendors to see all their product reviews in one place and be able to request to speak (anonymously) with the person who left the rating
- Allow a DrivingSales moderator to see and moderate any flagged ratings or facilitate / moderate an anonymous conversation
- Allow a dealer the option and ability to respond to a vendor's question about a rating
Feedback Tool Storyboard
The tool affected several existing sections of the site, but also introduced new sections. I story-boarded out the scenarios to get a better handle on what pieces were in play. Then from the storyboard, I sketched out a flow.
Feedback Tool Flow
I ran the flow past a couple of stakeholders and realized I needed a little more detail to show what was happening where. Color-coding the different sections helped and we were able to iron out the process.
Flow with More Detail
Armed with the approved tool flow, I created wire-framey mockups of the various tool screens that would be created or modified to make this thing happen. The developers felt confident enough in these wireframes to move forward; they didn't need high-fidelity mockups.
GALLERY: These are the wireframes mockups attached to the development ticket
Takeaways
Check with stakeholders along the way. It will save you time in the end. You don't always need hi-fi mockups to get things built right.