Having experienced exponential growth throughout the latter half of the 20th century, Daimler Truck North America marked the new millennium with the completion of a revolutionary new testing facility and a focus on enhancing vehicle efficiency, performance, and sustainability. Now in its eighth decade, it is the leading commercial vehicle manufacturer in North America.

As the company has continued to develop its production processes, its internal technical systems have also needed to evolve. Vehicle diagnostics and repairs are crucial to DTNA’s operations, but its proprietary platform for managing them lacked the mobile-first features technicians needed to work efficiently. Daimler saw an opportunity to increase productivity and make this work more attractive to the next generation of potential technicians, and they asked us to help bridge this gap.

DTNA’s original core platform, TechLane, is a hub for all things technical about fleet vehicles – fault codes, parts numbers, systems diagrams, troubleshooting guides, and more. Easy access to this information is essential for upkeep and repairs, but for truck technicians working upside down and elbows-deep under large tractor trailers, having to climb out to look something up on a laptop could be a big speed bump.

During a DTNA-sponsored hackathon in Austin, Texas, tech innovators Gavin Gillas and Rick McDonald devised a concept for a mobile app counterpart to interface with the TechLane platform. DTNA asked us to build upon their foundational work to create a purpose-built mobile solution designed with technicians’ needs in mind.

A successful solution would need to combine functionality and compatibility. After distilling the information-sharing needs communicated to us by DTNA, our team investigated the TechLane platform’s infrastructure and integration capabilities. This context informed product strategy for supporting user authentication, as well as the transfer of images, text responses, and metadata between the new mobile app and the existing TechLane platform. With these needs and constraints in mind, we mapped out the MVP for the “TechAssist” mobile app, designed for rapid implementation and smooth integration.

Many truck mechanics will tell you that when it comes to vehicle maintenance, even two hands are rarely enough. With TechAssist, technicians can use voice-to-text to document work completed and needed, as stand-alone memos or with image files attached.

Once the hands-on vehicle diagnostics are complete, a technician can quickly and easily upload the image and text documentation captured with the TechAssist app to DTNA’s central software hub by capturing a dedicated QR code for the work order, available on the TechLane web platform.