Toyota Connected Europe | Product Design

Design a Best in Class Vehicle Companion App Experience for Global Customers

Project Context

Toyota Connected Europe (TCEU) is developing one global vehicle companion app that will serve all of their customers around the world, replacing various regional apps. The business wants to deliver an improved, consistent customer experience to all customers, enabled through new technology of an upcoming vehicle launch.

Client Ask

  • Unify current in-market apps into one global app

  • Redesign app in line with best practise experience principles

  • Ensure design was functional and effective, and aligned with differing backend processes of different model vehicles

  • Improved experience based on customer feedback, research and testing

My Role
Product Designer within the Onboarding team, responsible for the experience and design of

  • Migration (of existing users)

  • Registration (of new users)

  • Onboarding

  • Log in

  • Adding a Vehicle

  • Account & Settings

  • User Profile

  • Privacy and consents

APPROACH

Establishing ways of working and aligning global teams

Joining the project during its early stages, when teams and processes were still being established, gave me the opportunity to influence how we worked together and help shape the foundations for delivery. I championed a collaborative, agile approach that enabled iterative progress, continuous feedback and alignment across a complex, globally distributed team.

  • Established ways of working
    Helped formalise team processes and rituals, creating a shared structure for collaboration, decision-making and delivery as the project evolved.

  • Embedded an agile delivery cadence
    Supported regular sprint refinement, planning, design and content reviews with product owners, sprint reviews and retrospectives. This created opportunities to validate work early, incorporate feedback and continuously improve how we delivered.

  • Aligned global stakeholders
    Facilitated fortnightly showcases with senior stakeholders across global markets, presenting progress, sharing emerging designs and gathering feedback to ensure decisions were informed by business needs and a shared vision.

  • Built transparency and trust
    Used regular communication and collaborative reviews to bring stakeholders along the journey, making progress visible, surfacing challenges early and building alignment around the experience we were working towards.

DISCOVERY

Understanding customer needs

Discovery activities helped us develop a deeper understanding of customer needs, behaviours and pain points across the different markets. We identified key use cases, uncover experience gaps and establish a strong foundation for designing a consistent, customer-centric global app experience.

  • Developed customer persona scenarios
    Created five persona-led scenarios representing a range of customer needs, including the most complex use cases, to ensure the experience catered for diverse user behaviours and requirements.

  • Mapped end-to-end customer journeys
    Developed five corresponding journey maps to visualise customer interactions, identify pain points and uncover key considerations, dependencies and opportunities for improvement across the experience.

  • Facilitated collaborative discovery workshops
    Facilitated and supported four workshops focused on different product and experience topics, bringing teams together to explore customer needs, clarify feature requirements and align on potential solutions.

  • Benchmarked existing and best-in-class experiences
    Evaluated our proposed designs against existing regional apps and leading digital experiences to identify gaps, challenge assumptions and highlight opportunities to improve usability, consistency and overall customer experience.

RESEARCH & TESTING

Validating the experience through customer research

I collaborated closely with our design researcher to plan and conduct moderated usability testing, gathering direct customer feedback to validate design decisions and identify opportunities to improve the registration experience.

  • Conducted 10 moderated testing session
    Exploring how customers interacted with the proposed experience and identifying areas for improvement.

  • Validated alternative registration flows
    Tested two registration flow prototypes (collecting customer information on one page vs spreading it across multiple pages) to understand which best met customer needs, comparing usability, clarity and overall experience to inform design decisions.

  • Recruited representative participants
    Used UserZoom to recruit a diverse mix of participants, helping capture a range of perspectives and ensure feedback reflected different customer needs and behaviours.

DESIGN

Designing an intuitive and secure onboarding experience

My focus was on making essential account and security processes clear, intuitive and consistent, helping customers move through each step with confidence.

  • Enhanced existing UI designs
    Refined established screens and interactions to improve usability, visual consistency and alignment with the evolving product experience.

  • Designed end-to-end onboarding journeys
    Created UI screens for key flows, including sign-up, log-in, credential verification and password resets, ensuring customers could navigate account access and recovery with ease.

  • Designed consent and security experiences
    Developed screens for managing customer consents, setting up app security and using biometric authentication, balancing ease of use with the need to protect customer accounts.

DELIVERY & OUTCOME

A cohesive and customer-centric onboarding experience

The design work focused on creating a seamless, intuitive and secure onboarding experience across the global vehicle companion app. By addressing the end-to-end customer journey, from registration and account management to vehicle setup and security, the aim was to make essential tasks straightforward while giving customers greater transparency, confidence and control.

  • Seamless registration and onboarding

  • Transparent data use and consent

  • Fast and effective onboarding

  • Effortless vehicle setup

  • Clear and accessible security controls

  • Straightforward profile management

Driving Customer Adoption, Retention and Satisfaction

The improved onboarding experience aimed to increase customer adoption and retention by making it easier for customers to register, get started and engage with the app. By creating a more seamless, intuitive and transparent experience, the goal was to improve overall customer satisfaction while reducing friction throughout key journeys and minimising the need for customer service support.