Product Case Study: Video or Augmented Reality for Cars Inspection at OLX Autos (Part 1)
With 5,000+ employees and 500+ inspection centers across the Americas, Asia, and Africa, OLX Autos manages a truly global car marketplace. To transform the auto industry for the better, we need our solutions to scale while still catering to the unique needs of our users and team members, from Indonesia to Nigeria to Mexico.
That’s why we focus on identifying and eliminating bottlenecks, complexities, mistrust, and other problems. We want to bring a frictionless, comfortable experience to the auto industry (a sector notorious for a poor buying and selling experience).
A key component of the used car buying process is car inspection. We’re trying to sell a fairly technical product and it’s used. We must objectively understand the condition of the car and arrive at an accurate price. This process is super important to this journey.
The issue
As you can see, online car shopping can get complicated. A lot of potential issues can arise. With inspection, there’s been lots of advancement over the years but it’s still quite manual. You still need an expert who can go through the checklist and analyze physical and digital data.
The goal
The goal was simple: Make car inspections more trustworthy, efficient, and seamless for the consumer.
For example, picture yourself walking around your car just with your phone. Can we make this happen? Can you inspect the car by yourself? This was the hypothesis the team wanted to solve.
Our approach
The OLX Autos Product team had to understand the cost that comes along with failure. For their solution, the initial idea was to build a video-oriented solution to allow sellers to present the car they were selling, where people walked around the car’s exterior and interior. The seller would then upload the video and the OLX Autos platform algorithms would slice and dice it to create the car listing. A lot of platforms were doing such video solutions in the consumer space and in the markets where OLX Autos is operating.
Since people had become more comfortable with video, especially while remote working during the COVID-19 pandemic, this seemed like the right solution. Other OLX platforms already had video solutions. For instance, sellers of household products can make videos to help buyers with decision making. The thought was repurposing this for the car category. But was there enough evidence this would reduce the team chances of failure?
The Solution
The team had to figure out what that can try today without building something today. OLX Autos had stores and video capabilities from other OLX platforms. The team started to do some on-the-ground pilots. They got people to get on video calls with inspection engineers or make a video and send it directly to the Product team. OLX Autos was not the only one in the space trying to do this. There are SAAS, insurance, and OEM companies trying to build something similar. The team spoke to a lot of people, from VR and AR to software and video.
They team decided video wasn’t the way to go. Too many potential obstacles existed. Making a video around your car is awkward. You don’t know if you should talk and how to open the car. The quality can dip significantly. The size of the video makes it hard to upload and optimize too.
Instead, the solution was smart images: An AR layer which guides users on how to take photos and what to capture. It’s a tap-tap experience that’s simple for the user (more on that, coming soon….).
