The automotive sector is rebuilding its digital layer. Distribution models are shifting, customer journeys are moving online, and dealer holdings, leasing companies and mobility providers are all developing new platforms, portals and services. Most of those projects begin the same way: with documents. A strategy deck, a functional specification, a list of requirements. Everyone around the table agrees — until the first working version appears and it turns out that everyone had a different picture in their head. By then the development budget is already spent.
This is precisely where Oscar Smeulders' expertise lies. With more than twenty-five years of experience as a designer, he works in the phase before anything is built. He translates strategic intentions into concrete, visual concepts: interfaces, flows and prototypes that make an idea reviewable long before a line of code is written. Not as decoration afterwards, but as a thinking tool at the front of the process.
Over the past twenty-five years, Oscar has worked for leasing companies, charging and mobility service providers, and car dealers and dealer organisations. The work ranges from customer-facing portals and configurators to internal tools and the visual identities around them. That breadth means he understands both sides of the table: the commercial and operational reality of an automotive organisation, and what it actually takes to turn an idea into something people can use.
For clients, this means the expensive questions get answered early. Does this concept work for the end user, or only on paper? Which of these three directions do we pursue, and what do the other two cost us? What does this portal actually look like before we commission it? Where does the customer journey break down? Involving a UX/UI designer at the start is not an extra step — it prevents a great deal of wasted time and money later on.
Oscar is known for a pragmatic, visual way of working. He asks questions early, makes things concrete quickly, and works alongside strategy, marketing and IT rather than between them. His advice is independent and grounded in what can genuinely be built. He would rather kill a bad idea in week two than defend it in month six.
