App development
Complex discovery research within the automotive industry
The Problem
Vehicle apps are an innovation that have become more prevalent with the onset of the digitalised car. Vehicle apps allow users to monitor the vehicle in many ways – for example Electric Vehicle charge status, vehicle health, or the vehicle location.
In North America, the Toyota vehicle app was one of the first in market and was due for a redesign, starting with a Discovery phase of research.
The Solution
I was hired to take part in the Discovery, alongside another researcher and a designer. We initially ran stakeholder interviews to uncover problems, limitations, and expectations for the new app.
There were no analytics, so I set up a feature level survey with users and a scoring system for customer value.
We visited the states and interviewed salespeople in the dealerships. We also ran 20 x contextual interviews with app users, in their vehicles, capturing experiences, pain points and attitudes towards vehicle apps.
The Outcome
Precise details of this project are too sensitive to share as the project is still live (Q4 2023).
The Discovery outputs were communicated across the organisation to create a shared vision for the app, and the process of creating visionary prototypes using the findings has begun.