Role & Scope

As the lead designer on a cross-functional team, I owned the end-to-end UX design of the roadside assistance feature for Verizon's Family App. The work spanned about three months from discovery through high-fidelity design, covering user research and flow mapping, current state audits of two existing RSA products, and a complete new experience built to serve multiple user types simultaneously. I worked closely with product and engineering throughout, navigating complex subscription logic and real-world constraints to deliver a feature that holds up under pressure.

Process overview

User Research & Segmentation
Entry Point Mapping
Current State Audit
User Flow Design
High-Fidelity Design

User Research & Segmentation

The Family App was absorbing roadside assistance capabilities from two separate products, each with its own flow, its own subscription model, and its own user expectations. Before any design work could begin, the first priority was understanding who was actually going to use this feature and what they were walking in with.

Users fell into distinct segments based on their subscription state and which legacy product they were migrating from. Each segment had different access to features, different starting points within the app, and different levels of familiarity with how roadside assistance worked. Mapping these groups early was what made it possible to design a single flow that served all of them without forcing anyone through unnecessary steps.

Entry Point Mapping

Roadside assistance isn't a feature users normally browse to. It’s one they reach it in the middle of something going wrong. Understanding how users would actually land on the feature was as important as designing the feature itself.

I mapped three distinct entry points: direct navigation from the primary nav, a link from the driving insights page, and a link triggered by a crash detection notification. Each one carried different context about what the user already knew and what they needed next. Designing for the most common paths first kept the core flow clean, while edge cases were handled without complicating the primary experience.

Current State Audit

Both existing RSA products had documented flows, and auditing them side by side made the gaps immediately visible. One experience was stripped down to the essentials but left users without enough feedback during the request and wait period. The other was more thorough: covering tow destination selection, driver information, and live tracking. However, it introduced friction through redundant steps and unclear subscription states.

The audit shaped two core goals for the new design: reduce the steps users had to take to get help, and give them consistent, clear feedback at every stage of the process.

User Flow Design

The proposed flow organized the RSA experience into a linear sequence: open the RSA landing page, select or add a vehicle, choose a service type, confirm a pickup location, select a service provider, submit the request, and track in real time. Phases were grouped into five stages: Open RSA, Request Service, Pre-Service, Service in Progress, and Service Closeout — giving both users and the cross-functional team a shared mental model for how the feature worked end to end.

Several decisions shaped how the flow came together:

Subscription-aware entry. The RSA landing page surfaced different content depending on a user's plan status. Active subscribers saw their event allotment, member ID, and a direct call-to-action. Users without an active plan saw a clear path to purchase. The same entry point served both without either group hitting a dead end.

Map-first location input. Rather than requiring users to type a precise address while stranded, I pushed for a map-based pickup selection where users could move the pin to adjust their location, supplemented by free-text search for situations like highway breakdowns where no address exists.

10-mile towing constraint handling. Towing destinations beyond 10 miles couldn't be serviced. Rather than surfacing this at submission time, I designed the error state to appear inline as soon as an out-of-range destination was selected, keeping the map visible so users could immediately course-correct without losing their progress.

Pre-populated driver info. The driver information step pulled from account data by default, keeping the experience fast for repeat users while still allowing overrides when needed.

High Fidelity Design

The high-fidelity phase translated the flow into a complete set of screens built against the Verizon design system. Key screens included the RSA landing page with subscription status and event tracking, vehicle selection with add-vehicle support, service type selection, map-based pickup and dropoff location, service provider list sorted by RepairPal certification and distance, real-time tracking with two progress milestones, and a post-service satisfaction survey.

Edge cases were designed with the same level of care as the primary flow, including the 10-mile error state, the out-of-subscription purchase path, and the handling of vehicles without GPS that fell back to ETA-only tracking.

Impact & Learnings

The RSA designs shipped as part of the larger Family App unification effort, consolidating two separate product experiences into one coherent interface that served multiple user states without added complexity. The inline constraint handling and map-based location input were both retained through final review; two of the decisions I advocated for most directly.

What this project reinforced was how much user context matters when the stakes are real. Someone stranded on the side of the road isn't in a position to troubleshoot a confusing flow or re-enter information they've already provided. Every step that could be simplified or pre-populated needed to be. That constraint made the design decisions easier to defend and sharper to execute.