From Wall of Forms to Guided Path: Rebuilding Trust in Auto Credit Inquiry

01 · Context

The Challenge

At CDK Global (Roadster), the online car-buying experience required customers to move through a multi-step credit inquiry process — one of the most sensitive, trust-critical moments in the entire purchase journey. The existing flow wasn’t designed with the weight of that moment in mind: financial data collection felt transactional and generic rather than secure and guided, and dealership stakeholders needed confidence the flow met regulatory and compliance expectations.

What I Owned

Mapped the full multi-step credit inquiry journey, from initial interest to submission

Designed transactional UX patterns for collecting and confirming sensitive financial data in a way that reinforced trust at each step

Worked within compliance constraints specific to automotive lending and dealership regulatory requirements

Partnered with dealership stakeholders to validate the flow against real showroom and online buying scenarios

How the Direction Changed

Financial data collection flows tend to default to dense forms because that's the easiest way to satisfy compliance requirements.

My approach instead broke the credit inquiry into smaller, clearly-labeled steps with progressive disclosure — showing users only what was relevant to the step they were on, with clear framing of why each piece of information was being requested.

This reduced the sense of being interrogated by a form and replaced it with a guided, transparent process, which mattered both for completion rates and for dealership trust in the tool.

What Changed