AV companies ship features validated by engineering, then find out riders, fleet operators, and regulators were never asked what actually earns trust. We run structured research with your real stakeholders and turn what we learn into a roadmap and a market story that match. That's the difference between a demo that impresses and a program that gets renewed.
The Problem
Engineering owns the roadmap, nobody owns the buyer
Most AV product roadmaps get built by the team solving the hardest technical problem in the building, which means perception, planning, and mapping priorities decide what ships next – not the fleet operator who runs the vehicle at 2am or the city official who has to defend the pilot at a council meeting. Feature prioritization tracks engineering difficulty, not what actually moves a deal or a permit forward. By the time marketing gets the roadmap, the story has to be reverse-engineered from whatever shipped, which is why so many AV launches lead with a disengagement rate instead of the operational problem the buyer actually has.
Trust gets marketed before it gets researched
An AV company is one bad video away from a news cycle, and most marketing teams respond by either overclaiming safety in a way that invites scrutiny or hedging so much the message says nothing at all. Neither comes from actual research into what riders, safety drivers, or fleet partners need to see before they trust the vehicle – it comes from guessing under deadline pressure. A trust message built on assumption instead of structured research falls apart the first time a reporter or a regulator asks for the data behind it.
Pilots skip the research that prevents the expensive redesign
AV pilots launch on tight timelines with pressure from investors or city partners to show progress, so the rider onboarding flow, the in-vehicle HMI, and the remote-operator handoff process ship with whatever engineering had time to build – not what a structured rider and operator study would have surfaced. The redesign that follows a rough pilot isn't just an engineering cost, it's a credibility cost with the same regulator or enterprise partner who watched the first version stumble in public.
Enterprise and government buyers can smell a generic pitch
Selling into a transit authority, a logistics fleet, or an industrial site is nothing like selling software – the buyer has an operations team, a safety case, and a procurement process built around their specific environment, not yours. A product story built for investors or consumer riders doesn't hold up in that room, and AV companies that skip real research into how their specific buyer operates end up pitching capability instead of fit, which is why so many promising pilots never convert to a signed, multi-year contract.
How We Help
We start by auditing what you actually know about your buyer versus what you're assuming. That means pulling apart your current roadmap, your pitch deck, and your rider or partner-facing materials to find where the story is built on engineering priorities instead of buyer priorities.
From there we build a research plan around the specific stakeholders in your buying and adoption chain – riders or shippers, safety drivers or remote operators, procurement and safety officials at the enterprise or municipal level, and the regulator itself where relevant. We design structured interviews, ride-alongs, and message tests around the decisions each stakeholder actually has to make, not a generic customer survey.
Execution runs in parallel tracks. On the product side, we run usability and trust research on the rider or operator-facing interface – onboarding, handoff moments, in-vehicle communication, remote-assist workflows – and feed findings back to your product team as prioritized fixes, not a research report that sits in a shared drive.
We tie research findings to measurable outcomes: message resonance in follow-up buyer interviews, task completion and confusion points in interface testing, and movement in your enterprise or municipal pipeline once the story changes.
The difference between us and a research agency or a branding shop is that we're fractional operators embedded in your team, not consultants handing off a deck.
Because AV sits under more regulatory and media scrutiny than most categories, every deliverable is built to hold up outside the building – in a regulator's binder, in a reporter's inbox, or in a city council meeting. We don't hand you research that only works in a pitch to your own board.
What we deliver
- Stakeholder research sprints – structured interviews and ride-alongs with riders, safety drivers or remote operators, and enterprise or municipal buyers to replace assumption with evidence
- HMI and onboarding trust audit – usability testing on the interface moments that make or break rider and operator confidence, with prioritized fixes handed to product
- Positioning and message testing – safety, ROI, and operational messaging tested against the real buyer before it goes into a deck, a filing, or a press release
- Competitive and regulatory landscape map – a clear view of how competitors and regulators are framing the category so your story doesn't repeat someone else's mistake
- Go-to-market narrative rebuild – a roadmap-to-pitch translation that turns research findings into the story your sales and comms teams actually use
The AV companies that win pilots aren't the ones with the best disengagement rate – they're the ones who can tell a fleet operator exactly what changes on their operations floor, in language the operator already uses.
Our Methodology
Our AV product research engagement runs as a 90-day sprint, not an open-ended retainer. Days 1 through 30 are discovery – stakeholder mapping, a roadmap and message audit, and research design across your rider, operator, and buyer segments. We agree on which decisions the research needs to inform before a single interview happens, so findings translate into action instead of a slide deck.
Days 31 through 60 run the research itself: structured interviews, usability testing on rider and operator-facing interfaces, and message testing with real buyers rather than a generalist panel. We synthesize as we go, surfacing findings to product and GTM leadership every two weeks instead of saving everything for a final readout.
Days 61 through 90 convert findings into a prioritized roadmap adjustment and a rebuilt go-to-market narrative, plus a plan for the next research cycle. Traditional agencies hand off a research report and move to the next client; we stay embedded through the roadmap decision and the first pitch that uses the new story, because research that doesn't change a decision wasn't worth running.
How We Work
The first 30 days are discovery and research design, run jointly with your product lead and whoever owns GTM – usually a VP Marketing or the founder at your stage. We need access to existing rider or partner feedback, your current roadmap, and introductions to two or three stakeholders per segment to start structured interviews.
Days 31 to 60 are execution. Expect a standing weekly working session with your product and marketing teams, plus scheduled interview and usability sessions with riders, safety drivers or remote operators, and enterprise or municipal contacts. We bring the researcher and the operator who translates findings into roadmap and messaging decisions – you bring the access and the willingness to hear findings that contradict the current plan.
Days 61 to 90 shift to synthesis and rollout: a prioritized roadmap memo, an updated positioning and message set, and a plan for how your team keeps running this kind of research after we hand it off. Most clients keep us on in a lighter fractional capacity past day 90 to carry the new story into the next pitch cycle or pilot launch.
Team structure is small and senior on purpose – a lead researcher and strategist plus an embedded GTM operator, both of whom have run this kind of work in regulated or hardware-adjacent categories before. No account manager layer, no junior researcher running interviews without one of us in the room.
- Roadmap decisions grounded in stakeholder evidence instead of engineering assumption
- Trust and safety messaging that holds up under regulator, media, and enterprise buyer scrutiny
- Faster movement through enterprise and municipal buying processes once the story matches how the buyer actually operates
If your autonomous vehicles company needs product design & research leadership, we should talk.
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Frequently asked questions
How much does product design and research cost for an AV company?
We price the engagement as a fixed-scope 90-day sprint rather than an hourly research retainer, so cost is set upfront based on how many stakeholder segments and research tracks you need. It runs well below what it costs to hire a dedicated in-house research lead and a positioning strategist, and unlike an agency retainer, the fee doesn't keep running once the roadmap and narrative are rebuilt.
How long until we see results?
You'll see the first research findings within the first two weeks of execution, around day 35 to 40 of the engagement, because we synthesize continuously rather than saving everything for a final readout. The full roadmap adjustment and rebuilt go-to-market narrative land by day 90.
How does your team integrate with our product and engineering staff?
We embed in your existing product and GTM meetings rather than running a parallel process – we join your roadmap reviews, relevant sprint planning, and your GTM standups. Your product lead and engineering stay owners of what actually ships; we bring the stakeholder evidence that informs that decision.
What makes Winston Francois different from a UX research firm or a branding agency?
A UX research firm hands you a findings deck and stops at interface recommendations. A branding agency starts from the story you want to tell, not from stakeholder evidence.
How do you measure ROI on a research and positioning engagement?
We track it against the decisions the research was meant to inform: whether message testing moved resonance with real buyers in follow-up interviews, whether interface fixes reduced confusion or drop-off in usability sessions, and whether the rebuilt narrative changed how far you get in enterprise or municipal buying conversations that were previously stalling. If a specific change doesn't move one of those markers, we treat that as a finding too and adjust the next sprint.
What kind of AV company is the right fit for this?
This fits Series A through growth-stage AV companies – robotaxi, autonomous trucking, delivery, or industrial and site-specific autonomy – that already have a working product and a pilot or early commercial program, but whose roadmap and pitch are being built on engineering assumptions instead of buyer evidence. If you're pre-product or still deciding whether to build at all, you need a different kind of help first.
