"Ever tried autonomous driving? It's freaking scary, especially when it stops ... unexpectedly"
BRIEF
Remove the pain from leaving autopilot.
CLIENT
University Project
TEAM
Personal project
DUration
2019 4 Months
skills
UX UI IxD Design 3D Modeling, VR
STEP 01 / UNDERSTAND
Context
From Autonomous Level 2 to 4, taking back the control of the vehicle is a stressful poorly communicated process. These research focused on recorded event and comments from early prototypes.
"What's gonna happen if I don't ?"
— Alex Kersten Testing the limits of Tesla Autopilot.
"I feel like my brain is struggling"
— Alex Kersten Testing the Renault Symbiose Level 4 prototype.
STEP 02
User archetype
Getting to know a product strenghs and weakness through the eyes of its customers is always a good starting to point. Interviewing a couple of Porsche driver allowed me to discover two different kind of user.
THE
Gamer
THE
Tech
STEP 03
Ideate
That's the creative moment. This is where analyse and research are blend with knowledge to craft a desirable product.
STEP 02 / DEFINE
The mission
A statement we can refer back during the creation process. It's the goal of this project.
Create an emotional concentration experience.
STEP 03 / RESEARCH
Emotional Design ?
In early 2000, Donald Norman, a cognitive psychologist, create the emotional design theory. In order to fit this definition, product have to respect three levels. They have to be ;
User Archetypes
STEP 04 / PROTOTYPE
User Stories
What is your best waking up memory ? — "Oh it's definitely on my last trip to Bali, we had an amazing breakfast in swimming pool watching the colorful sunset".
In order to capture those favorites moments, I browsed Youtube to find the most inspiring holiday memories. They represent positivity, happiness and motivation, the values supporting a great wake up experience.
Re-create user story : Color, Sound, VR
I then proceed to translate those characteristic into a simplified, timed short movie.
STEP 05 / GET USER FEEDBACK
Test
As you should never take my word for a proof, I went ahead and tested an early provotype of my concept.
"Testing one user, early in the project is better than testing fifty near the end" - Steve Krug
Design Iteration : Timeline + VR
User Feedback gave me a quality backlog of things to improve. It allowed me to focus on the really important part of this project.
For example, I realize the importance of have a great steering wheel animation (it wasn't in the first draft).
A full 3D environment was necessary for the experience to be understandable. So while I was building it, I decided to focus on light and sound as the main part of this transition.
Instead of building a physical model. As opposed to most of my colleague, I choose to focus on building the best VR experience possible. The result is a 5minutes visual and audio virtual reality experience.
focus:
emotional reconcentration
STEP 06 / INDUSTRIAL DESIGN
Product Design
In order to optimize this experience, I decided to create a premium one person vehicle, a MONOPOD.
The interior is composed of 2 main elements; the "seat" and the "belt"
Seat
As the central element of this new mobility experience, the seat received a special attention.
Build of two movable parts, it is fully adjustable and allows the user to slouch inside it. The autonomous system use the motorized system to wake up the user and put him into a straight up, driving, position.
While the headrest integrates the high fidelity sounds system. The seatbelt allows complete freedom of the user in all scenes.
Last but not least, two rails are fixing the seat into the belt, giving it a strong and safe connexion with the main security frame.
Belt / Steering
The dashboard wraps around the driver/passenger, creating a feeling of safety. It is also an element packed with high technology. Nevertheless, in a minimalist approach it only suggest information when and where it's relevant.
Belt / IHM
In addition to the enhanced settings available on the app, this vehicle offers intuitive and solid controls. They adjust sound levels, light intensity and the strength of the "focus" pulsations.
