TOYOTA CONNECTED EUROPE | 2025
Is my vehicle safe and secure?
Redesigning Toyota’s vehicle status experience to give drivers a clearer, more reassuring view of their vehicle’s safety, security and health.
ROLE
Product Designer
TEAM
Cross-functional squad: Product, Engineering & Research
CONTRIBUTION
Led the redesign from discovery through validation and delivery
The Problem
The legacy version of Toyota’s app did a poor job of signalling when something was wrong, and an equally poor job of reassuring users when everything was OK.
Through research, interviews and card-sorting exercises, we knew that vehicle status consistently ranked as one of the most important areas of the companion app. At a glance, users wanted to answer two simple questions:
Is my car secure?
Is my car safe to drive?
The existing experience wasn’t answering either of these clearly.
As part of the wider app redesign and design-system overhaul, I was asked to rethink the vehicle status experience. We needed a feature that clearly communicated vehicle safety and security while bringing the feature into the new design system.
Existing Experience
The existing experience gave vehicle status very little prominence. Entry into the feature was easy to miss, positive status was represented by a small green check, and the status area itself focused mainly on security-related information such as doors and windows.
Once inside, the experience was also difficult to scan. Information was presented as a long list of individual vehicle states, making it hard to understand at a glance what was normal, what required attention, and how important an issue might be.
Most importantly, the experience stopped at reporting status. It provided limited guidance on what an issue meant, whether it could be resolved remotely, or what the user should do next. This created an opportunity to rethink vehicle status as a broader health and security experience.
The existing dashboard and status designs
Discovery & Research
Discovery and research showed us that vehicle status was about more than simply displaying information. Users want to quickly understand whether their vehicle was secure and safe to drive, know how current that information was, and understand what action they could take when something needed attention.
I synthesised these findings into a set of user stories to make the needs tangible and give the team a shared reference point for design. They centred around four themes: confidence in the vehicle’s current state, clarity around when status data was last updated, the ability to resolve certain issues remotely, and guidance when action was required outside the app.
This framed the design challenge from just presenting vehicle data, to creating a clearer sense of status, urgency and next action.
Another key discovery was that users did not naturally separate vehicle health from vehicle status. They thought about both under the same umbrella - is my vehicle okay?
In the existing information architecture, security information such as doors and windows lived within Vehicle Status, while health and safety items such as warning lights and engine checks were surfaced elsewhere in the app. This was in line with the technical structure of the product rather than the user’s mental model.
User stories created as a result of discovery work.
Design, refinement & testing
Collaborating with research, product owners and developers, we created initial concepts and designs based on the user stories. Designs went through multiple rounds of refinement based on insights from ongoing moderated usability tests.
Grouping status information
One of the key design decisions was how to group different safety, security and vehicle health statuses. Early concepts separated these into tabs or categories, but testing showed that users didn’t want to navigate between groups to understand the overall state of their vehicle.
Instead, they preferred to see all relevant information in a single view, with clear visual grouping where needed. This shifted the experience towards a more unified status overview and reduced the amount of navigation required to check on a vehicle.
Reducing the prominence of the vehicle image
We also explored how prominent the top-down vehicle image should be. A key limitation was that the image could not always represent every vehicle model or configuration accurately enough to act as the primary source of information.
Rather than rely on an imperfect visual, I reduced its prominence and used it more as a supporting view of alerts. The primary status information remained in the content below, while the vehicle image provided a quick spatial cue for where an issue might be occurring.
Initial designs and some related results.
Final Design
A status experience that works at a glance
The final experience was designed to answer that all important question immediately - is my vehicle okay?
Vehicle Status was given a much clearer entry point from the home screen, providing reassurance when everything is fine and drawing attention when something needs action.
Within the feature, the 'safe and secure' headline communicates the overall state before the user needs to interpret individual vehicle data.
Security and vehicle health are then grouped separately. This allowed us to explain what a positive state actually means, rather than relying on a generic green check. Both remained within a single overall view, while clear visual grouping helped users understand whether an issue related to security or vehicle health.
The experience also uses progressive disclosure. For users who simply want reassurance, the headline and summary may be enough. For those who are more anxious, unfamiliar with their vehicle or interested in the detail, they can explore the more detailed status information.
Dashboard, status and status details screens in the positive state.
Making problems easier to understand
When something is wrong, the experience shifts from reassurance to action.
Rather than presenting every door or window as a separate problem, the design reflects the way users think about vehicle security. If any door is unlocked, the vehicle is simply presented as unlocked. The user can investigate the detail when they need it.
The small vehicle visual provides additional spatial context without dominating the interface. It helps users understand where an issue is occurring and provides useful feedback during resolution, for example, an alert disappearing from the vehicle as the problem is successfully resolved.
Health alerts follow the same principle. Instead of simply reporting a warning light, the details can explain what it means and provide guidance on what the user should do next.
Dashboard, and status screen examples in alert state.
Resolving alerts - not just viewing them
A major change was making Vehicle Status actionable rather than simply informational.
Where an issue can be resolved remotely, the relevant command is available directly alongside it. Users can also trigger multiple commands without waiting for each one to complete, allowing them to quickly work through several issues while still receiving individual progress and success feedback.
Not every problem can be resolved through the app. In these cases, clear guidance such as “Check at vehicle” sets the right expectation and tells the user what action is required.
Alert resolution flow
Design system mode and brand checks across Toyota, Lexus and Subaru - Light and Dark
Outcome
Final usability testing validated the new hierarchy, with participants able to quickly understand overall vehicle state, distinguish health from security issues and identify the appropriate action when something required attention. Following validation, I worked with development to take the experience through implementation.