🔐 This project is protected for confidentiality. Thanks for understanding!
Reimagining a fleet management coaching product: A strategic vision with potential $20,000+ in yearly fleet savings
COMPANY
Samsara
MY ROLE
Design Researcher
PROJECT TYPE
Internship
TIMEFRAME
10 weeks—2024
OVERVIEW
challenge
Fleet managers were losing money from in compliance fines because Samsara's coaching platform only addressed safety behaviors, leaving Hours of Service violations unmanaged.
solution
Through 12 stakeholder and customer interviews, I delivered 5 key insights that fundamentally shaped the product roadmap.
Team & Role
Lead Design Researcher: Led alignment workshops, research strategy, and execution
Worked with: PM, designers, and customer success teams
key skills
Research strategy and execution
Stakeholder alignment and workshop facilitation
Business case development with data triangulation
Cross-functional relationship building
impact
Uncovered 5 key insights, which led to prioritizing 2 new roadmap items.
Influenced 4+ design decisions that were launched and received positive customer feedback
Influenced the vision that secured executive support for a unified coaching product vision that has potential to save fleets over $20,000 annually in compliance costs
Context
Samsara is a leading IoT platform that helps 25,000+ fleets optimize safety and efficiency.
Their customers include trucking, construction, agriculture, and logistics companies.
current state
The trucker coaching product is limited to safety behaviors, leaving fleet managers without a way to easily track and coach on other behavior types.
While the existing coaching platform effectively increased driver safety and garnered strong customer satisfaction, it was limited to safety-related behaviors.
This left fleet managers unable to coach drivers on other costly issues like Hours of Service violations ($16,000+ fines) and excessive idling ($3,000+ annually per vehicle).
the challenge
Uncover the ideal experience that enables fleet managers to coach truckers effectively across multiple behavior types.
The team needed to present a unified coaching vision to executive leadership in order to gain buy-in to start building.
But first, we needed to uncover customer's expectations for a unified coaching platform.
team alignmnent
To kick off the project, I gathered and aligned the team’s priorities through a collaborative workshop.
From the start, It was unclear what we knew and what we still needed answers to.
So, I led an alignment workshop that helped transform the scattered individual questions into three straightforward research questions that would guide our project going forward.
guiding questions
From the Workshop, 3 key questions emerged
1
How do customers feel about the proposed unified coaching flow? Does it provide value to them?
2
What are customer’s expectations for a coaching effectiveness report?
3
What specific customization needs do customers have for setting up automation in a unified coaching workflow?
The business case
I had alignment on the team's goals, but what about the business goals?
The connection became clear.
Expand coaching beyond safety → Reduced compliance fines and idling costs for customers → Increased customer satisfaction, retention and spend
execution
Diving into the deep end of customer needs & hours of interviews later, a few key insights emerged.
After 8 customer interviews with fleet managers, 4 interviews with customer success managers, and a thorough literature review, 3 keys insights emerged.
main insight
Fundamentally Different Mental Models
Customers have fundamentally different mental models for safety coaching versus hours of service violations. Hours of Service violations are even more critical to prevent and address immediately.
Customers want to know how effective their coaching program is
Evaluating coaching effectiveness also includes understanding how the program is impacting their business.
Knowing how to coach is just as important
Coaching workers effectively is not just about prioritizing who to coach. It’s also about how to coach them.
building a case
Now, how could I bring these insights to life?
The key insight that I wanted to drive home to the team was the need for proactive Hours of Service coaching.
Things I kept in mind as I was building out my research share out.
Create a visual for the insight as much as possible
Bring in supporting numbers and data if available
Provide both long and short term recommendations
building a case
I first presented the high-level idea that fleet managers' mental models differ depending on the type of coaching.
I emphasized that because of legal implications, HoS violations hold a more significant weight for customers.
building a case
Next, I demonstrated one of the key differences between Hours of Service coaching and safety coaching.
This difference had to do with how Hours of Service coaching is often less straight forward and involves follow up conversations about the root cause of the violation.
building a case
Finally, I triangulated my findings by including recent industry data that shows that Hours of Service violations are a growing area of concern.
This ensured that my recommendation was rooted in the reality of customer's current context.
The outcome
How did the team respond? The case for proactive Hours of Service coaching was accepted.
The team's response was positive, and my push for prioritizing proactive HoS coaching led to its inclusion in the roadmap.
Although my internship ended before I saw my research's outcome, the insights resonated with the team.
the impact
The team gained executive support for the Unified Coaching Vision, which was grounded in research insights.
Business impact
Revenue growth: Expanding coaching capabilities positions Samsara to capture more revenue from existing customers and attract new enterprise customers.
Competitive differentiation: Unified coaching vision addresses a key market gap, positioning Samsara ahead of competitors.
Customer impact
Cost savings: Potential $20,000+ in yearly fleet savings
Operational efficiency: Streamlined workflows reduce fleet managers' time spent on driver coaching by consolidating multiple behavior types
💬 "To have coaching across safety, fuel efficiency, and compliance is amazing. Previously, we were asking managers to go to multiple places and products to coach for those things. This experience is exactly what we’ve been talking about.” (VP Safety, Shipping & Logistics Company)
Team impact
💬 "Sarah played a critical role in defining and refining our vision for Unified Coaching… Along the way, her workshops helped Product and Design prioritize the vision on the most impactful customer needs." (Senior Product Designer II)
💬 "Sarah took the initiative during our weekly group syncs to help the team align on the core areas we wanted to focus on during research, drove recruitment, and worked with the team on a research script and analysis that could be used to support the updated vision that we presented to our executive leadership team.” (Senior Product Manager II)
Reflection
What I wanted to show you…
I navigated an ambiguous project scope while maintaining research rigor and stakeholder alignment. Despite many shifting requirements and priorities, I regularly checked in with the team to make sure that we were aligned throughout, leading to research insights that were actioned upon.
What I'll bring with me to future projects…
Building Cases with Data: I learned the importance of triangulating findings using customer quotes, behavioral data, and industry trends to make insights compelling and harder to dismiss.
Stakeholder Alignment as Strategy: Getting everyone on the same page early prevents scope creep and ensures research efforts target the right questions. There's no such thing as asking for too much clarity from your stakeholders!
Thinking both long term and short term: The most impactful research has actionable insights for the team in the short-term, but also challenges our thinking of the future.
Contact
I'd love to connect, share experiences, and grow together 🌱
Seattle, WA, USA
sstumme3@gmail.com
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