THE GOAL
Designing a mobile and device experience that brings clarity, control, and confidence to everyday driving.
Working as a freelance product designer at TomTom in Amsterdam, I designed the mobile companion app and the interaction behaviour of their latest consumer device. The work spanned UX and UI design, device-level behaviour, and prototyping, in close collaboration with product, hardware, and engineering teams.
The project focused on translating complex technical behaviour into clear, predictable interactions across app and device, from first-time setup through everyday use.
DEVICE SETUP
Onboarding without friction
I designed the full onboarding flow for pairing and first-time use, turning technical steps into a clear, device-linked sequence. When pairing fails or drops, the app guides users through gentle recovery paths instead of vague errors. Small motion and interaction details explain what’s happening without overload, making setup feel approachable and low-effort.
TUTORIALS
Understanding the device at a glance
To help users quickly understand the device, I designed short in-app tutorials that explain core light and sound behaviours. Each micro-lesson shows a single pattern with precise timing and simple context, so users learn by seeing rather than reading. The tutorials are optional, calm, and easy to revisit, giving drivers confidence without adding friction to the experience.
DEVICE SETTINGS
Shaping how the device works
The companion experience was designed while the hardware was still in development, meaning the interaction model had to be defined from scratch. I worked closely with engineering to establish the core settings system — alert categories, sound and light logic, update flows, and device states — translating prototype capabilities into a coherent, understandable product behavior.
DEVICE UX: LIGHTS AND SOUNDS
Defining the core behaviour of the product
A central part of the project was defining how the physical device communicates with the driver. I designed the complete system of light and sound behaviours — colour, timing, rhythm, intensity, and subtle variations — that help drivers instantly understand what the device is signalling. To explore and refine these patterns, I built a custom simulator using Cursor, allowing rapid testing and iteration of different light and sound combinations before they were implemented in hardware. The system had to be immediately recognisable without being distracting, and intuitive without requiring much explanation.
