In recent years, more and more technical systems dispose of some form of intelligence which allows to control and diagnose the processes and states in such systems. One important prerequisite for both control and diagnosis is monitoring, i.e. a systematic observation, surveillance or recording of entities of a technical product or its surroundings by any technical means. Current investigations were able to clarify that the design of a technical system can ease the control and diagnosis of this system. The same is true for monitoring; this fact will be demonstrated in this paper on the example of a research vehicle which is intended to foster the development of mapping systems and algorithms. In a sense, the main objective of this vehicle is also a kind of monitoring. Due to its unique design, this vehicle is able to navigate on all kind of terrains. It is equipped with several forms of sensors, which are consciously mounted at certain positions on the vehicle in order to allow a detailed detection of the surroundings. The investigation, how design can ease monitoring, was supported by a well-known model of product concretization and concrete insights could be found on all levels.