All the Things, Volkswagen
Shaping Ownership, Connection, and Experience at Scale
Over the past few years, I’ve helped shape the digital experience at Volkswagen by leading design and UX strategy, managing cross-functional teams, and guiding designers through complex problem spaces. I’ve defined information architecture, mapped user journeys, improved SEO, conducted and applied user research, and written purposeful content.
As a design leader and people manager, I focus on building team clarity, nurturing individual growth, and creating space for bold ideas to thrive. It’s been a labor of love. Below are a few highlights. If you are interested in a more detailed look at my processes or would like to request a case study, feel free to visit the Methods page or contact me through the About Me page.
The Volkswagen App
A Concierge and Utility for Your Vehicle
As a design leader, I helped shape the vision for the Volkswagen app, guiding it from product strategy to execution. I managed cross-functional design efforts across key user journeys, enrollment flows, and system consistency. I also supported user research and usability testing, facilitated workshops, documented decisions, and established scalable UX standards to drive clarity, speed, and alignment across teams.
The Challenge
Creating the Volkswagen app was not just about launching a product—it was about laying the groundwork for a connected ecosystem. We had to align across multiple departments, navigate technical limitations from in-vehicle systems, and build a foundation that could scale with evolving customer needs. Striking the right balance between usability, business goals, and engineering feasibility was a constant negotiation—but also what made the work rewarding.
The Solution
We established a shared product vision by bringing design, engineering, and business teams into alignment early. Through collaborative concepting, customer journey mapping, and fast iterative flows, we identified the moments that mattered most to users and prioritized them together. We benchmarked competitor apps, defined MVP features, and built a modular design system that allowed us to move quickly without losing cohesion. Regular working sessions and critique loops kept feedback flowing across disciplines and helped us stay grounded in both technical feasibility and user needs. By approaching challenges as a unified team, we created a flexible app framework that could evolve with the platform and deliver meaningful value from day one.
The Results
1.6 million unique interactions
The foundation we built has enabled the Volkswagen app to become a central touchpoint for Volkswagen owners. In 2024 alone, the app saw over 1.6 million visits, with more than 686,000 users exiting to schedule service—a clear indicator that the experience is both intuitive and actionable. With a 4.7-star rating across 212.2K reviews, the app’s success reflects its usability and impact. The scalable design continues to support new features, customer feedback, and business growth.
Vehicle Ownership Experience
Owners and Services on the Web
I led and contributed to redefining the web-based vehicle ownership experience for Volkswagen. The goal was ambitious: consolidate over 20 fragmented sites into a cohesive, user-friendly platform that supports owners at every stage of their journey. Starting with stakeholder alignment and customer research, we developed journey maps and service blueprints to uncover gaps, reduce redundancy, and identify key opportunities. I guided the structure through comprehensive information architecture work, helped shape a unified content and design narrative, and ensured SEO and accessibility were prioritized from the start. This was a rare opportunity to improve not just functionality, but to tell a richer, more human story of ownership.
The Challenge
The existing ownership experience was fragmented across numerous micro-sites—each with its own tone, layout, and navigation. Users struggled to find key information, while internal teams lacked a scalable framework for updates or future enhancements. We needed to create a streamlined experience that was intuitive for customers, flexible for the business, and aligned with technical constraints—all without losing sight of what made the Volkswagen ownership experience special.
The Solution
We approached the redesign with a system-first mindset. Starting with customer journey mapping and stakeholder workshops, we identified key ownership moments—from post-purchase onboarding to service scheduling and beyond. We used these insights to structure a scalable information architecture that could support both evergreen content and evolving business needs.
I helped lead the creation of modular content templates and design components, ensuring consistency across the new platform while allowing for flexibility by vehicle, feature set, and customer type. We introduced a unified tone and voice, consolidated duplicate resources, and prioritized accessibility and SEO throughout the process.
Collaboration was key: we worked closely with engineering, legal, and product teams to ensure feasibility, governance, and long-term sustainability. The result was a foundation that not only solved for the present—but could grow with the brand and its customers
The Results
Grew from zero to 1.5 million visits
The reimagined ownership experience made an immediate impact. In 2024, the platform welcomed over 1.5 million visitors, generating nearly 3 million page views. Of those, 300,000 arrived through natural search, a testament to our improved SEO structure and content strategy. We saw close to 1 million unique visitors, with an average time on site of approximately 3 minutes—a strong signal that users were finding value and engaging meaningfully with the content.
Beyond the metrics, the streamlined architecture and modular design system set the stage for continued growth, enabling faster updates, better scalability, and a more cohesive customer journey.
Community and Brand
Evolving the Digital Experience Beyond the Transaction
I contributed to evolving Volkswagen’s digital presence from a product-focused experience to one rooted in community, advocacy, and brand connection. This initiative focused on elevating narrative and storytelling across the site to foster emotional engagement and long-term brand affinity. I developed the foundational strategy and used persuasion, storytelling, and cross-functional alignment to influence leadership and create internal champions. Together, we built momentum around the need to support brand engagement outside of in-market moments.
My contributions included defining the information architecture, identifying high-impact content opportunities, and ensuring brand values were consistently integrated across digital touchpoints. I also worked to improve SEO value through content strategy and structural clarity, helping the site perform better while telling a richer brand story. At its core, this effort was about creating meaningful, resonant moments for the large majority of people who admire and support the brand—even when they are not actively shopping.
The Challenge
Volkswagen’s digital ecosystem was heavily optimized for the visitors in-market for a vehicle—but it offered little to the broader community of owners, fans, and brand advocates. There was no clear space or strategy to foster long-term engagement, celebrate lifestyle content, or elevate our sustainability and innovation stories. I worked to reframe the problem for leadership—shifting the conversation toward building emotional resonance and brand loyalty. The challenge was to design an experience that could serve both short-term business goals and long-term brand building, with an architecture flexible enough to evolve over time.
The Solution
We built a strategy focused on creating a digital home for Volkswagen’s brand voice—one that could scale across storytelling, campaigns, outreach, and owner engagement. I helped define a flexible information architecture that supported both evergreen brand pillars and timely cultural moments. Our approach combined lifestyle content, sustainability milestones, and human-first storytelling into a cohesive experience.
We brought this to life through high-impact campaign moments—like our Super Bowl activations, Saturday Night Live integrations, and branded content that blended entertainment with purpose. We developed outreach programs, featured customer and community stories, and highlighted Volkswagen’s efforts toward carbon neutrality in ways that felt engaging and real. My role spanned from vision to structure: I collaborated closely with creative, product, and comms teams to ensure consistency, while advocating for long-term brand building that extended beyond the 3% of in-market buyers.
The Results
+1 million engaged
The shift toward community-driven storytelling and branded experiences significantly expanded Volkswagen’s reach and relevance beyond in-market shoppers. Our Super Bowl and SNL campaigns drove massive spikes in traffic and engagement, with branded content outperforming product-focused pages in time on site and shareability.
Outreach programs and owner stories helped foster a sense of belonging, while the new content architecture made it easier to surface lifestyle features, sustainability milestones, and cultural moments in one unified experience. We saw meaningful improvements in SEO performance, returning visitors, and social referrals—clear signals that we were engaging everyone.
Just as important, the work helped shift internal mindset. Leadership began prioritizing narrative, customer connection, and long-term loyalty as core pillars of the digital experience—laying the foundation for future brand-building efforts.
Rachael (Hustyi) Zaluzec
CMO & SVP @ Volkswagen of America | Customer Experience, Brand Marketing