The Future Autonomous Car Sharing Experience for City Commuters | Individual Project
My role: UX Design, Cross-platform design, Mobile App, HMI interaction, Car model prototype, Service Design
Tools: Figma, Adobe Illustrator, Rhino, KeyShot, Qualtrics
Timeline: April 2021 - August 2021
It's never easy to find a parking spot in Shanghai, or any metropolitan. It's even harder to get a taxi in the rush hour. When I am troubled by the packed cars in the park lot, I am wondering whether the unused car could be translated into additional public transportation. If not now, what about in the future with more technology?
How to translate the unused cars to transportation resource?
1. Understand the current transportation resources and problems in the city
2. Recognize the thoughts, behavior, motivation of both car owners and riders
3. Envision a design solution that meets the needs of users
My design outcome is a self-driving car model that allows owners to share the car with riders. Owners can select the time frame for sharing, e.g. during parking time or weekend. Riders can claim a trip on the companion Mobile App. Then, the self-driving car would pick them to the destination.
The interior design of the car is also envisioned to meet the specific need of self-driving service both for the owner and for the rider, which includes movie display and the rotation of seat for privacy.
The companion Mobile App is designed for both the car owner and rider. Rider can book a car service on the app, change interior settings and manage personal profile. Owners can select the time frame they want the car being shared and other related settings.
I started out by understanding the quantity of taxi in China and whether it satisfies the user need. It turns out that 11 out of the 18 cities doesn't have enough taxi, while the demand is continuously increasing given the positive population flows to those major cities of China.
Then, I decided to research more about the cost and benefit of owning a private car to understand the following questions:
1. Why do people want to have a car in the city?
2. What do people need to pay for the benefit?
3. Are those costs worthwhile?
To understand the amount of time that people use their vehicles in a daily basis, I conducted observations with two users in Shanghai. It turns out that their parking time is usually 2-4 times than the driving time.
Then, in order to know about whether people want to translate their personal cars to public transportation and in what could this be possible, I created a survey to understanding their thoughts and intentions.
Based on the information I gathered from the research above, I synthesized findings to develop three personas and guide ideation.
Future-oriented design is hard to test: When I tried to describe the design solutions to some of the participants, I realize that it is very hard to let them imagine the future technology and down to details about this technology. This definitely affected the effectiveness of the feedback I received.
Fill out more details: The current design solution is very high level and future-oriented. There are still many details about realization need to be discussed, like the ethics of self-driving technology, the security and data privacy issue of both owners.
Feedback and Testing: I would try to gather more participants to test my ideas and prototypes because the current number I have is still not adequate and may not reliable enough address the individual difference in both functional and non-functional requirements.
