Redesigning the petrol station experience

How could buying fuel become clear, consistent and transparent across brands?

The project was planned to follow disruptive research methodologies. The intention was to understand the problem before considering solutions.

I observed customers across different brands and documented how they fuelled their vehicles. Most used the pump interface, some relied on an app, others required assistance, or went straight to the counter.

I recorded the sequence of actions, hesitation points, channel switching and moments where staff intervention became necessary. What initially looked like customer preference often turned out to be something more significant:

Customers were using workarounds to compensate for gaps in the service.

As part of the research I interviewed customers, staff and station owners. The questions were designed to understand how each role responds when the system cannot meet their needs.

Affinity mapping helped me find patterns by grouping items extracted from observations and interview responses. Interviewees often downplayed the friction points and adopted workarounds as solutions to their needs.

I initially expected the main problem to be too many steps in the pump flow, but research exposed a deeper issue:

The service assumed knowledge that many customers didn't have.

Customers were expected to understand brand-specific sequences, subsidy rules, app limitations and pump feedback, often without the service making them explicit. That shifted the focus of the project from improving a pump interface to understanding where the service itself was creating uncertainty.

I created an end-to-end task analysis covering the pump, app, counter and attendant-assisted journeys.

Using researched evidence I developed user profiles. These described the knowledge gap of six different customer types.

Cross-referencing the profiles against the task analysis exposed where knowledge gaps created hesitation, channel switching or failed paths.

The research produced many problems to solve, but they did not carry equal weight. I assessed them across:

This created a first tier of design priorities and kept the solution focused on problems supported by evidence rather than assumptions.

The analysis showed that some of the complexity came from the order of the service itself, not just the interface.

I moved subsidy verification earlier in the flow, so the system could confirm the customer's status before showing anything that depended on it.

Instead of requiring customers to assemble information from stickers, pump displays, apps and receipts, the redesigned service aimed to help customers at decision points by closing the knowledge gaps.

Closing the knowledge gaps also simplified the interaction. The redesigned journey resulted in:

A task-oriented approach focuses each screen on one task alone. During testing I was particularly interested whether users can make decisions confidently based on the information shown on the interface.

The next stage is moving from customer validation toward industry and service feasibility.

I contacted KPDN to request an opportunity to present the research and discuss the customer experience implications of the current subsidy journey. I believe they can influence consumer protection, subsidy policy and implementation.

Those conversations are still in progress and represent the next stage of the project, rather than an outcome I can claim yet.

I started by questioning a petrol pump interface.

The research led into a much wider scope involving customer behaviour, service channels, subsidy rules, payment and station operations.

By understanding customer needs, social context and service failures, I was able to streamline the underlying journey and bring clarity to an everyday task.