Creating the drive

Abstract

As a master student of Strategic Product Design, the project has been executed at the Product Marketing division within the Consumer business unit of TomTom International BV in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. The project aimed at commuters; a group of frequent drivers, who did not feel appealed by current navigation solutions TomTom offers. Commuters, who are familiar route drivers, showed no need for turn-by-turn instructions. Current TomTom personal navigation devices were assumed to be too directive and not tailored to the commuters’ needs. TomTom recognized this challenge. The objective of this project was to find out the latent needs of the commuter and to design an appealing user driven concept solution. A user research was performed utilizing the method of contextmapping to capture the latent needs of this target group. The final outcome of this user research contained five key latent needs: The need for relevant information, for timely information, to keep on moving, for mutual trust and for a streamlined day. These latent needs represented the wishful situation for commuters. To be able to design a concept driven by these wishes, a design vision was formed: ‘My design will transform a challenging commute into a desired ritual.’ This vision served as a translation of the user needs into design and as driver for idea generation. From a variety of user driven ideas, three were selected based on relevancy to the user and company. The concept that was developed by merging the strengths of the ideas was ‘TomTom Impulse’. TomTom Impulse is a unique prior to travel service, that offers automated notifications and expectations about the commuters daily route on smartphone and connected TV. TomTom Impulse represents an innovative and informative concept, aiming to delivering relevant information, on a personal and timely base. Commuters benefit from this solution in the way that the information is provided before departure, rather than during travel. The user’s ability to anticipate is maximized by relevant and predictive information from TomTom. Combining the external information with own knowledge, commuters can choose to adapt their journey according to the information and ultimately increase control over the journey. This project covers the front end of the product development process. The conclusion of this report consists of several recommendations for further development. Keynote here is the recommendation to validate the findings and test the concept on a larger scale, before making further steps in the development process. The contribution to TomTom with this study is realized on various levels. With this research, it has been proved that a substantial opportunity exists for new solutions in the prior to travel phase. It is a yet unsaturated and non-competitive environment, that shows a perfect opportunity for establishing the TomTom brand in this uncharted ground.