Skip to content
Redesigned Auto Hub vehicle page for a 2014 Audi S7 on desktop and mobile, with refinance offers and a recall alert under Vehicle updates

Experian2023–2024

Auto Hub redesign

Turning years of visual and technical debt into a clean foundation, and getting two resistant teams to back it.

My role
Lead Product Designer — end-to-end ownership, cross-functional negotiation
Partners
Engineering, Product, UX Research
Timeline
Q3 2023 – Sep 2024 · Staged rollout from Aug 2024
Outcome
Shipped to 100% of Experian users · Legacy code retired

The situation

Experian's Auto Hub was carrying both visual and technical debt. Legacy components had drifted from the evolving design system, and the underlying architecture made every update expensive. Everyone felt it: users saw inconsistency, engineers dreaded touching the codebase, and product couldn't justify prioritizing it.

It was a known problem with no clear owner. I made it mine, and set out to bring two resistant teams with me.

Legacy Auto Hub on desktop and mobile web: a garage carousel above a dark blue tab bar, with loan details and refinance offers
The legacy Auto Hub on desktop and mobile web.

The argument

The cost nobody counted

  1. 01

    The visible problem

    Outdated components. Visual inconsistency. A product that looked like it belonged to a previous version of Experian. Everyone could see it.

  2. 02

    The hidden cost

    Every feature built on the legacy code inherited its constraints. Engineering paid for it on every release.

Legacy Auto Hub header: a full-width vehicle carousel with garage stats, above a dark blue tab bar
E.g. 01 A custom header that filled a third of the screen, couldn't be minimized, and stayed in place as the content below it changed.
Legacy Auto Hub custom components: a circular loan balance gauge beside a refinance offer card
E.g. 02 Components built only for Auto. Design-system updates couldn't reach them, so each one was changed by hand, page by page.

The negotiation

How we got aligned

Engineering

Scrapping live code is significant work, and engineering's resistance was reasonable: was the investment justified?

The gap between the legacy components and the current design system was wide enough that a rebuild made more sense than patching. That gave engineering a clean, bounded mandate.

Product

Product's resistance was about priority. The redesign was competing with new features, and maintenance work rarely wins that conversation.

What unlocked it was a goal both teams already shared: building quickly on a product that looked current. The redesign was the work that made that possible, and that earned it a place on the roadmap.

“Rather than framing the redesign as a new cost, I reframed the legacy version as the cost already being paid.”

The redesign

Before & after

After: the redesigned Auto Hub Vehicle value tab on a laptop, with Carvana value tracking and trade-in offers
Before: the legacy Auto Hub Vehicle value tab on a laptop, with a Kelley Blue Book instant cash offer
BeforeAfter

The design decisions

Three decisions shaped the rebuild. UX research tested the designs with users as they took shape, which kept the work pointed the right way.

  1. 01 · Garage

    Every vehicle at a glance

    The legacy garage showed one vehicle at a time. The redesign turned it into a high-level view of every vehicle, built for people with more than one.

  2. 02 · Header

    Content leads

    A compact vehicle header replaced the legacy banner, so each tab opens on its content: loan, value, history or recalls.

  3. 03 · Components

    System, not custom

    Design-system components replaced the custom ones, so a change made once applies everywhere.

The redesigned Auto Hub, screen by screen

  • Redesigned Auto Hub garage on a phone: a 2014 Audi S7 with two updates, above an auto insurance card
  • Vehicle overview for the 2014 Audi S7, with value trends for private party value and equity
  • Loan info tab: a loan progress ring at 49% paid, with monthly payment, APR and term
  • Vehicle value tab: Carvana value tracking and a sell-or-trade-in offer
  • Vehicle history tab: an AutoCheck score of 72 above the vehicle details
  • Recalls tab: an open manufacturer recall with its description and date

The effort

Designed before it was prioritized

  1. Q3 2023Design begins
  2. Early 2024Prioritized — reframe approved
  3. Aug 28, 202450% rollout — staged release
  4. Sep 2024100% release to all users

By September 2024, every Experian user was on the new Auto Hub and the legacy code was retired. Auto no longer needed its own components or its own fixes, and work on it kept pace with the rest of the product. The teams that had resisted the rebuild were the ones who delivered it.

The work nobody owned shipped to everyone.