Search across CDK had never worked
CDK's products were built in silos, each with its own data and its own search. A service advisor looking for a repair history had to know which app held it first. Earlier attempts at a global search had all been abandoned before production, for the same reasons each time:
- No user research to ground what people actually needed.
- No work across product teams to understand each product's data.
- Too much scope, trying to solve everything at once.
This time we did the opposite: start with research, work across products from day one, and ship a focused first version that could grow.
Turning research into the design
I worked alongside a UX researcher, another architect and an embedded developer. My part was turning the research into design direction, then owning the interaction design and UI all the way to production, while working with product teams across CDK so each product's data showed up in a way that made sense.
Needs customer records and inventory fast, mid-conversation with a lead, on desktop and mobile.
Looks up VINs, repair history and parts during a service appointment. Speed matters most.
Wants a high-level view across the dealership. Search is a management tool, not just a lookup.
What research confirmed: people didn't want to think about which app held their data. They wanted to type a name, a VIN or a repair order number and get the right result.
Results grouped by type, not one long list
A service advisor and a sales rep might both search "ford" and want completely different things. Segmented results let each person jump to the category that matters to them, with the depth of an in-app search.
Mid-fidelity comps went straight into the developer's prototype environment, so design and build moved together and testing fed back sprint by sprint.
Letting new products onboard themselves
Every product that joins CDK's ecosystem needs to be searchable, and researching each one from scratch didn't scale. The team built a self-serve intake: product owners answer structured questions about their users, workflows, data and permissions, and the team validates and implements. Days of research per product became a lightweight form.
Live in Unify
Global Search shipped inside CDK Unify, where earlier attempts never reached production. Customer records, repair orders, inventory and workflows are all reachable from one search bar, whichever product holds the data.
| Before | After |
|---|---|
| Each app had its own search, if any | One search bar for everything a user can access |
| Users had to know which app held the data | Results grouped by type, not by product |
| Earlier attempts never reached production | Live in Unify |
Next on the roadmap: natural language queries, fuzzy matching, autocomplete and a mobile-optimized experience.