Who Is This Car Truly For?
If everyone is your customer, every decision becomes a compromise.
The Most Expensive Decision
Who is this vehicle actually being built for?
Most automotive projects begin with what appears to be a perfectly reasonable briefing. A growing segment, a competitive price, familiar technologies and a long list of customer expectations provide enough certainty to move the project forward. Yet beneath this apparent clarity, one fundamental question often remains unanswered:
Who is this vehicle actually being built for?
Instead of defining a clear customer, many projects define a market. They describe demographics, expected features and purchasing criteria, but rarely the person whose priorities should guide every decision that follows. The result is a briefing that leaves enough room for every department to interpret success differently.
As development progresses, engineering optimizes technology, marketing expands the promise and design tries to reconcile increasingly conflicting expectations. None of these decisions are wrong in isolation, but without a shared understanding of the customer they no longer add up to a coherent product.
This episode explores why one of the most important decisions in automotive development is made before the first sketch is drawn—and why the clarity of a product depends less on the number of requirements than on knowing exactly who those requirements are meant to serve.
Key Perspectives
"If you don't know who it is for, designers either design for themselves—or simply follow existing rules."
"Every additional customer you try to include chips away a little more of the product's emotional appeal."
Strategic Problems Explored In This Episode
Strategic Problems Explored
In This Episode
1 | Broad Customer Definitions Create Weak Priorities
Trying to appeal to everyone removes the criteria needed to make strong product decisions.
2 | Every Department Solves a Different Problem
Without a shared understanding of the customer, design, engineering and marketing each optimize for their own interpretation of success.
3 | Features Replace Meaning
When no clear customer exists, projects naturally focus on adding more functionality instead of creating stronger relevance.
Closing Thought
Can this feature create desire?
EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
SEASON 2 | EPISODE 1
Whi Is This Car Truly For?
Transcript available soon