The setup
ExxonMobil was entering the Mexican fuel market with a loyalty and convenience app — the primary digital touchpoint for the Mobil brand with consumers.
A portfolio manager had engaged Ernst & Young Mexico as the development vendor, who brought a white-label solution built primarily for desktop.
I was allocated as the sole design lead, responsible for visual language, UX, information architecture, and ensuring the use cases defined in the company's strategy were actually delivered.
Chris O'Brien (UX Supervisor) joined the initial kick-off week to onboard me into the project. From week two onward, it was on me.
A design trainee, Isadora, was allocated to the project mid-way. I brought her into the work quickly — giving her real deliverables alongside instruction on research methodology, process, and the project context.
What the research said
Before designing anything, I immersed myself in multiple layers of commissioned research — a qualitative study by De la Riva, a quantitative study by Mizzouri covering 624 drivers across Mexico City, Veracruz, and Monterrey, and a loyalty market analysis by Loymark RAPP.
I synthesized these into a protopersona that grounded the team's shared understanding of the target user. Three findings shaped everything that followed.
Trust and safety outrank price as station selection drivers.
The data was consistent across all studies — 76% of drivers cited getting the quantity they paid for as critical.
Users mentioned avoiding certain stations because of dangerous locations.
The car wasn't just a vehicle to Mexican consumers; research showed it functioning as a second home, a family companion, a source of pride.
Trust in a gas station was therefore trust in something that touched daily life at a deeply personal level.
ExxonMobil's own internal strategy document positioned the mobile platform as the primary channel for loyalty, communication, and future service integration. The vendor's desktop-first approach was contradicting the company's own roadmap.
What I left with
The foundation
I left ExxonMobil before final implementation. Documented outcomes are from concept testing and usability validation — not post-launch metrics.
Validation
What validation confirmed: the mobile-first approach matched actual usage context.
The safety and convenience framing resonated with target users.
The core use cases defined in the original strategy were covered in the design.
The SUS score of 77 placed the prototype above average on usability.
Discovery-to-validation process
The project also confirmed something broader: a rigorous discovery-to-validation process, run within the constraints of a large enterprise, a pandemic, and a resistant vendor, produces better-grounded decisions than moving straight to delivery.
That approach — hypothesis, exploration, validation, iteration — became part of how I work everywhere.
