pauldesigner.com
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CarExpert

CarExpert

Research, information architecture and a token-based design system behind the live showroom of an Australian automotive media platform.

Year
2025
Role
Product Designer
Tools
Figma, Figma variables, Design tokens
Two phones showing CarExpert's showroom on mobile, the Popular Makes list and the Ford make page, against a dark ground.

Context

CarExpert is an Australian automotive media platform: car reviews, news, and a research showroom where readers move from a make to a model to a specific year, with pricing, specs and deals at each level. I joined in 2023, freelance at first and full-time from October, as Product Designer.

My role

I own the design system and lead the design of new website features end to end: user research, information architecture, wireframes, high-fidelity design, validation with users and stakeholders, and release alongside the engineers. The work here is the showroom.

The work

Information architecture first. From user research and stakeholder interviews I mapped how readers actually research a car, make to model to year to variant, and used that to define the page structure and interaction flow before drawing any interface.

Grid of low-fidelity wireframes for the CarExpert showroom, covering make, range and model-year pages at mobile and desktop widths.
Showroom wireframes: Popular Makes, the make page, the range page and the model-year page, each at mobile and desktop.

A system, not a set of screens. I built the design system in Figma with tokens and variables, so colour, type and spacing are defined once and drive every page and breakpoint. New pages are assembled from the same components rather than redrawn.

Overview of the Figma file for the showroom, showing dozens of page frames, component sets and a labelled group of empty states.
The showroom in Figma: every page, breakpoint and empty state built from the same component set.

Wireframe to high fidelity. After testing the wireframes with users and reviewing them with stakeholders, I took the flows to high-fidelity designs for mobile and desktop.

High-fidelity model-year page for the 2020 Ford Ranger on mobile and desktop, with price, rating tiles, pros and cons, a year selector and related reviews.
Model-year page, mobile and desktop. Price, rating tiles and pros and cons sit above the fold; the year selector and reviews follow.
High-fidelity pricing and specs pages on mobile and desktop, with variant tables grouped by body type, dimensions diagrams and expandable specification sections.
Pricing and specs, two levels deep: the full model, then a single variant with its dimensions and specifications.
Two phones showing the mobile showroom, the Popular Makes search and the Ford make page.
The mobile showroom entry points: search or browse by make.

Outcome

A component-based showroom, live on carexpert.com.au across mobile and desktop, built on a token system that new pages are assembled from rather than redrawn. Shown here: the make, range, model-year and pricing pages from that system.