Support Center
Decreased call center volume 24%, saving users time and Garmin money
Client
Garmin
Services
UX Design
Platforms
Garmin Website
Date
August 2016
Project
Support Center
Team
1 Project Owner
1 UX designer
1 Web designer
1 Copywriter
2 dbas
1 ux researcher
Timeline
1.5 weeks
My role
As the UX designer for the Garmin Support Portal, I was on loan to the garmin.com team to help with the user experience for the new support center.
Overview
My goal was to create an intuitive, user-friendly experience that empowers users to find answers on their own by improving content discoverability and streamlining navigation.
We aimed to reduce reliance on the support center for common questions—freeing up support staff to focus on more complex, high-touch issues.
Goals
Research
The Garmin.com team provided user research gathered through interviews conducted by the support team, giving us valuable insight into real customer pain points. At the time, the support presence on the site was minimal—limited to a phone number and a few vague suggestions like “unplug it and plug it back in,” alongside a scattered list of mostly unrelated PDF manuals. This wasn’t creating a satisfying experience for users.
Many were frustrated by the need to call in, wait on hold, and speak with support just to figure out basic things—like how to sync their device to their phone or whether a certain feature was even supported by their model. It was clear the current setup wasn’t meeting their needs. To better understand the landscape, we also reviewed how other manufacturers approached product support, looking for patterns, best practices, and opportunities to do better.
Process
For the first time in my career, I was focused strictly on UX—something new for me after years of working as a full-stack designer, taking projects from 0 to 1. I was used to doing it all: research, customer interviews, wireframes, high-fidelity design, prototyping, and iteration. On the Garmin Support Portal project, I had to narrow my focus—but quickly realized this opened up space for collaboration. Garmin had a talented team of content designers, graphic artists, motion designers, and videographers. They just needed to know what to create.
I knew from the start that users would need multiple self-help formats—video, manuals, software updates, and online articles. Originally, I wanted users to find their product by typing in the model name. But some models had different specs or feature sets, and we needed to ensure users landed on support content specific to their device. We explored adding a second input for the serial number, but most serial numbers were hard to access—either embedded in the device or on packaging users had likely discarded.
After discussions with the DBA and API developers, we streamlined the process to a single input that accepted either model name or serial number. This simplified the experience while still surfacing precise support content. Once a product was identified, users landed on a dedicated page tailored to that specific device. I organized the content into four clear categories:
Topics – Short online help articles for quick answers
Manuals – Digital versions of product manuals
Software Updates – Updates for devices and compatible apps
Videos – For users who prefer to watch rather than read
This structure created a more intuitive and efficient support experience, aligning with our goal of helping users find what they need quickly—without having to call support.
Topics
The topics came from lists we made based on frequency of call topics, this was provided by the support team.
Articles were made around those topics, meant to be short and to the point.
Manuals
The manuals were made for download but also would be digitized and brought online for a better visual and search-ability.
Software
Software Updates – Updates for devices and compatible apps
Videos
Videos – For users who prefer to watch rather than read
Outcomes
The new support center launched about six months after I wrapped up my part of the project. It took roughly a year to produce all the content needed, and the team continues to create valuable new material to this day. I’m really proud of how the project turned out.
Even during my time at Garmin, I found myself using the support center frequently—both to better understand features related to my work and to look up information about my own devices. Seeing the final product in action, solving real problems for users like myself, was incredibly rewarding.