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03PRODUCT · CAR WASH

Self-service car wash terminal

What the client asked for: an interface that is obvious enough to raise the throughput of each terminal by cutting the time a person spends washing. I ran the research and found out where drivers get stuck, and why they more often pick a staffed car wash over a self-service one.

ROLE
Briefing, research, user flow, CJM, UI kit
DURATION
September 2025 — January 2026, four months
TEAM
Me, a second interface designer, two developers
PLATFORM
Wide-format screen, Android

01What the client asked for

The client is a sole proprietor. The first briefing made his goal clear: an interface noticeably easier to understand than the competition’s.

02Research

First a pilot survey among people who use car washes, to find out what actually hurts. Then interviews, to pin down the real needs one by one. In parallel I went through the competitors and collected references.

  1. 01A pilot survey among car wash users
  2. 02Interviews to uncover needs
  3. 03Competitor analysis
  4. 04Collecting references
The whole path from pulling up to the end of the session: branches, going back, and timeouts. Drag to move it, use the buttons to zoom in

03What gets in people’s way

The main finding: without driving experience, or without studying it separately, a person does not know which car wash function serves which purpose. People do not understand how to wash a car, or in what order the functions go. In that situation it is easier to pay for a staffed wash than to figure it out.

  1. 01It is unclear which function serves which purpose
  2. 02The order of washing is unclear too
  3. 03So the person goes where somebody does it for them
Three terminal screens: welcome, choosing how to wash, the list of ready-made programmes
The path from the very start: the splash screen, the fork between a ready programme and your own choice, the programme contents with prices

04The solution

We built onboarding and detailed explanations for every function — so that a person here for the first time understands not only where to press, but why. I worked on the concept, the colour scheme and the typography, and put together the user flow and the CJM. Alongside designing the interface I was assembling the UI kit with all the explanations, so the developers would get finished components straight away.

  1. 01Onboarding for first-timers
  2. 02An explanation for every function
  3. 03User flow and CJM as the backbone of the interface
Three terminal screens: choosing a programme, payment methods, a step-by-step description of the wash with a timer
Payment and the programme broken down step by step: what happens at each stage and why

05The conditions the screen works in

The terminal stands outdoors, and that shapes the entire design: water and foam splash onto the screen, people touch it with wet hands, the sun hits it and snow settles on it. The screen is large — which means an element that is comfortable for someone one metre ninety tall is out of reach for someone one metre fifty.

  1. 01The palette is picked for sun and rain
  2. 02The screen surface is chosen so it does not catch glare
  3. 03Splashes of water and wet hands on the touch layer
  4. 04Elements laid out to work for any height
The terminal mapped into reach zones: a blind zone and a banner at the top, below it the upper reach zone with the timer and balance, in the middle the optimal zone with the wash programmes, below that the lower reach zone with stop and payment, and a blind zone at the bottom
The screen mapped by height: where the hand reaches precisely, where it has to stretch, and where the glass is covered in splashes and pressing is pointless

06The UI kit alongside the interface

The UI kit was not assembled after the interface but together with it: as soon as a decision about a screen was approved, the matching component went into the library. By handover time I did not have to pull the mockups apart and redo them.

A fragment of the terminal UI kit: dark tiles with price and name, a banknote icon, blue buttons on the right
Large tiles for wet hands and gloves: price and name set apart, each programme with its own icon

07Behaviour, not just appearance

For every component I wrote down its behaviour: what happens on press, what to expect in the intermediate states, how the component reacts to an error.

RESULT

Interface and UI kit handed over to development

The terminal interface and the UI kit, with the behaviour of every component described, were handed over to the developers. The project is being built.