During my time as a consultant, I took on a consulting and product design role with Oil Changers, a large regional automotive service chain. The company operated dozens of stores across Northern California and needed a better way to track store performance, labor efficiency, and revenue metrics in real time.
At the time, performance data was siloed in spreadsheets and POS systems. Executives and store managers lacked a single source of truth to quickly identify top performers, inefficiencies, and opportunities across the business.
My challenge: design and deliver a Business Intelligence (BI) dashboard that could provide actionable insights at every level of the organization.
The Challenge
Oil Changers needed visibility into:
Sales performance across stores, regions, and territories.
Labor metrics, including clock-ins, breaks, and compliance.
Service breakdowns, such as top-offs, fleet accounts, and upsell percentages.
Voids and discrepancies, which directly affected profitability.
The solution had to work for both executives (macro-level view across all territories) and store managers (micro-level performance data). It also needed to be simple enough to use daily in-store, often by managers who had little experience with BI tools.
My Role
As a student, consultant and UI/UX designer:
Partnered directly with Oil Changers’ VP of Operations and regional managers to understand reporting needs.
Designed the BI dashboard interface, including gauges, odometers, and performance indicators that translated raw data into clear visual signals.
Created light and dark mode versions for use across different contexts.
Collaborated with developers to wire backend data into the dashboard, troubleshooting issues with metrics like cars count, top-offs, and labor calculations.
Helped define scope, change requests, and project priorities, often mediating between business stakeholders and engineering resources.
The Solution
The result was a Business Intelligence dashboard that functioned as the operational cockpit for Oil Changers.
Key Features
Gauge-Based Visuals: Each KPI (sales, labor %, cars serviced, upsells, fleet accounts) was displayed on a gauge or odometer, making performance instantly readable.
Company, Territory, Region, Store Views: Hierarchical navigation allowed executives to see company-wide rollups, while managers could drill down into individual store metrics.
Top Performer Highlights: A real-time leaderboard showcased which stores or employees were exceeding goals.
Light & Dark Modes: Flexible UI design ensured readability in both office and in-store environments.
Messaging & Alerts: Built-in communication tools allowed regional managers to send targeted performance updates.
Impact
Operational Visibility: For the first time, executives and managers had a single platform to monitor performance across dozens of stores.
Efficiency: Replaced manual spreadsheet roll-ups with real-time, automated reporting.
Accountability: Gauges and leaderboards created transparency around store-level performance.
Adoption: The dashboard became a daily tool for executives and store managers to monitor KPIs and make decisions.
Reflection
This project was formative in my career. It was the first time I had to design for a real-world business environment, balancing the needs of executives, managers, and frontline employees.
I learned how to:
Translate complex operational data into visual, human-readable interfaces.
Navigate scope creep, change orders, and vendor negotiations as part of a live consulting engagement.
Balance speed of delivery with design clarity, knowing that the dashboard had to be both functional and trustworthy.
Working on Oil Changers gave me an early foundation in data-driven product design—skills that I carried into my later work in immigration tech, edtech, and fintech.
