Doğan Şekercioğlu
Ford
UX Strategy for Private AVs | IDEO | 2018
Industrial Design & UX Strategy
Vehicle interior design
Concept generation
Storyboarding & animation
Prototyping
CAD & 3D Production
Additional Credits
Zeke Markshausen
Ovetta Sampson
Dave Vondel
Chris Gold
It will be years before we are in a fully autonomous world. Vehicles, supporting infrastructure, and systems will continue to evolve as we move toward this new state. Autonomy will not be a binary choice but a blended spectrum for the foreseeable future.
During this period, users will desire the ability to drive or be driven, depending on context and journey. Ford will serve users ranging from Aging Boomers who have driven their whole lives to Generation Z-ers who may never learn to drive manually.
We helped Ford define these new relationships with the vehicle and new paradigms of interaction through the lenses of trust and ownership.
Design Research
Context
To understand the technology, concept of trust and drivers of ownership, we started with interviewing roboticists, AV technology developers, ethicists, pilots, a guide dog trainer and a couple's therapist.
We also conducted two rounds of user research in the United States and China, to prompt directional feedback from vehicle owners.
Approach
People's understanding of the AV technology is heavily formed by media and marketing. To understand the potential trust pitfalls, we developed an AV super-powers card game to explore design tensions. This helped participants to contextualize autonomous technology in their daily life and prioritize possible trade-offs.
After setting the expectations, we gathered feedback on our sketched design provocations which were developed to gauge the ownership value of an AV.
We asked participants to illustrate their daily commute and rate the change of their emotional state.
Building Trust
As autonomous technology continues to evolve, drivers will be offered increasing levels of vehicle capability. Drivers will have to learn what their vehicle can and cannot do, and, more importantly, learn how to trust the autonomous capabilities of their vehicle.
In the near term, building trust between owners and their autonomous partners will be paramount during the transition to full autonomy. As autonomy evolves and users become more accustomed to AVs, establishing trust will become less important, but the need to maintain trust will endure.
Each game card represented an AV super power which involved a pro and a con, encouraging users to make trade-offs based on their commute needs.
Ownership
In a future that includes an increasing number of options for personal mobility, vehicle ownership will persist, driven by the same motives users have today.
Defining unique autonomy-enabled experiences will shape the meaning of owning a Ford vehicle in the future.
Following the card exercise, we utilized sketched design provocations to spark conversation on the value of a AV ownership.
AVx Pillars
Transitions are as important as end states.
The transitions between riding and driving are key moments of trust. They should be purposefully and holistically designed to assist people as they move between states.
Since users will switch regularly between rider and driver, it must be clear at every moment across the spectrum of automation who is responsible for driving. Users need time and assistance to transition mentally, physically, and emotionally between roles.
How might we gauge the appropriate level of proactiveness when prompting users to take-over?
Spaces should prioritize flexibility,
not prescribe activities.
People already know what they want to do in their lives; spaces should be designed to allow them to do those things better in their autonomous vehicles.
Users want the freedom to choose what they want to do with the space and time their AV provides. New rituals will emerge. Vehicle space will take on new meaning and offer new value to AV owners.
How might the vehicle interior inspire possibilities when users aren't engaged in driving?
Owners should always feel in command
of their vehicle.
In the future, vehicle owners will still want to control their environments, express themselves, and define what makes a space feel safe. AV owners will need to have a feeling of control, even over a car that can drive itself.
This is distinct from exercising control. Owners will not need to control their vehicle’s every detail in order to maintain ownership over their AV.
How might we design for a transparent dialogue that gives users a sense of control over the system?
Vehicle intelligence should prioritize
serving the owner.
Personal data should be utilized thoughtfully to design for a trusting relationship between owner and AV. People have high expectations of future AVs because they see them as “smart cars” that can do more than just drive autonomously. Prioritizing the vehicle’s intelligence to serve this new relationship provides a clear give-get loop, strengthening the value of owned AVs.
Users expect their “smart cars” to interact like a friend or a partner, using their private information responsibly and securely to create meaningful experiences for them.
How might we create give-get loops that give owners control on how their data is used?
Autonomy elevates the freedom of driving.
AV technology should be able to raise the peaks of mobility while reducing the burdens of driving. Safe, driverless cars will alleviate the burdens of driving, allowing users to prioritize the things in their lives that are truly important.
In some circumstances, users will want to take control and drive their AV manually. In these moments driving is a pleasurable experience.
Designing ways to amplify the joy of mobility will add value to the experience of owning an AV.
How might we re-imagine the thrill of driving in a world of autonomous mobility?
Signature Journeys
Joy of Mobility
There’s a deep and authentic human desire to experience the world around us. This was true 100 years ago, when people first had the opportunity to move through the world at speed, and it’s still true today. AVs can deepen and extend our abilities to experience the world around us, both when we choose to drive, and when we choose not to.
This journey is all about how we will seamlessly transition from not driving to driving in the autonomous future.
A father and daughter are off on a weekend adventure. Their AV drives them to the outskirts of their city, dealing with the hassle of traffic.
Their AV agent recommends routes that will be fun to manually drive on. They sit back and explore these routes on their personal tablet.
Outside of the city, the vehicle approaches a fun-to-drive stretch of road and suggests that the father take manual control. He does.
The father enjoys a sensory drive through the wilderness.
His daughter points out a mountain to their right. Confident that his AV has his back, the father feels safe enough to stop driving and look away from the road.
The AV detects the father’s spontaneous disengagement and steps in to take control of the car.
Space to be Us
Within vehicles, we are used to very traditional spaces: the driver’s seat, the passenger seat, the backseat, the trunk. But in an autonomous future, vehicle space will be revolutionized. The absence of fixed seating positions will completely reconfigure the interior of the vehicle, creating countless new possibilities. This also gives us an opportunity to reflect on how people use and experience space. Space is physical, but space is mental too. That’s why the AV interior should feel like a place where anything is possible. People should feel completely like themselves inside the vehicle, like they're at home.
This journey is all about taking advantage of the free time and space that will be offered by a personal AV in the future.
Mom checks what’s already in her family’s AV using her mobile device and decides to pack extra diapers and a few new toys before setting off on their journey.
Dad’s doing his best, but the kids just want their mom.
Mom waits to enter a geofenced area then engages driverless mode. Upon activation, she lets go of the wheel and swivels around to join the rest of the family.
The family has finally left the city behind. Mom is able to easily interact with the vehicle and get her environment set just right while the little one sleeps peacefully in her arms.
Two Places at Once
Everyone feels that their time is invaluable. There’s never enough of it, and people value it more than just about anything else. Shared transportation services can meet certain needs, but AV ownership has significant advantages. Owning an AV gives people access to the ultimate luxury: a “chauffeur” who can be dispatched on a moment’s notice to run errands and drop off or pick up loved ones, or do anything else that might need to be done. Owned AVs also give people a chance to project themselves in the world, extending the reach of their values, desires, and abilities. The vehicle can become a true partner — almost a new member of the family.
This journey is all about how an owned AV can extend the effectiveness of its owner by utilizing smart environments and taking on new tasks.
The vehicle takes both cake and daughter home just on time for the party to get started..
Mom is swamped, preparing for her daughter’s birthday party.
She decides to send her AV to pick up her daughter up from school. From her kitchen, she uses a voice assistant device to command the vehicle outside of the house.
Once the car has arrived at school, Mom remotely greets her daughter and confirms she’s onboard.
She asks her daughter how her lessons went while she continues getting everything ready for the party.
Mom tracks progress of the car remotely and realizes that she forgot to pick up the cake. She adds a waypoint to the itinerary so that the car can go get it for her.
A bakery employee puts the cake inside an outdoor storage unit that she was granted access to through Mom’s transaction.
...
Signature Moments
Act of Driving as Affordance
There's no separate “button” for AV. The steering wheel symbolizes the essence of driving and acts as a trigger to engage or disengage the vehicle. Driver-related information only comes to life when relevant.
Choreographed transitions of the driver and control positions clearly communicate who is in control. Movement of the driver and vehicle controls signals imminent handoff.
Haptics, light and sound communicate the transfer of responsibility from AV to driver.
Controls are always ready — and present if the driver wants to take action.
Ambient Intelligence
Vehicle intelligence is accessible anytime and anywhere in the vehicle, regardless of user position and/or posture. While floating personal devices provide additional connections to and portals for vehicle intelligence, the ever present agent enables the access to core vehicle capabilities via surrounding Ribbon UI. The ambient agent and floating devices are not duplicative, but work in concert to create an interaction framework.
The intelligent agent manifests itself on the Ribbon UI and across brought-in devices.
The Journey Timeline slides along the Ribbon UI to follow the driver's position, continuously keeping her aware of the remaining autonomous time.
Driver can spontaneously disengage at will within an AV area, confident the AV safety net will take over seamlessly.
User as Center of Gravity
The Ribbon UI decentralizes controls, making them accessible from anywhere within the vehicle, no matter what position users are sitting in. It establishes the user as the “center of gravity”. The Ribbon UI focuses on shortcuts and quick actions, while brought-in devices provide more extensive control of vehicle, navigation and settings.
User-oriented vehicle utilities (storage, climate, lighting, window tinting, and sound) are redistributed to support freedom of movement.
Controls only appear when required and should be designed to allow quick ins and outs.
Storage is distributed and maximized by prioritizing utility against sculpted form, giving users options instead of a prescribed scenario.
User Experience Prototype
The design team collaborated with our in-house engineering team to distill our UX vision into an interactive prototype. This prototype was designed to replicate signature moments on a full scale to communicate intent and key technology building blocks.
Extra - Motion as a Design Medium
Early on, I focused on physical transitions and the impact of motion on user experience by building interactive mockups and digital motion studies. I used this tangible approach to communicate the importance of subtleties in motion (e.g. easing in/out, acceleration, perceived speed vs real speed) for the final user experience.
