Designing problems by designing solutions [Part 2]
The case of autonomous vehicles.
Hi, it’s me again. A few weeks ago I published the first part of my Hyper Island master thesis about the potential impact of autonomous vehicle’s onboard experience on its users and society at a large scale.
In the first part, I deconstructed how radical innovation processes, in this case for autonomous vehicles, are framing the end-user experience, eventually impacting society at a large scale. I explained that by supporting researchers to build autonomous vehicles, businesses are inputting viability requirements. With those requirements in mind, engineers and designers are focusing on solving business problems, over-seeing the impact it has on users and their experience. By doing so, we’re reducing the area of possible futures, displacing already existing negative behaviours (isolation and axiety in mind) and their societal repercussion (polarisation, violence, burn-out and so on) into new territories. At some point, we will have to either solve or cater for those issues (antidepressants, new laws, etc.) creating a vicious circle of innovation.
In part 2 of this series, I’m covering the research I did to move away from user compliant innovation towards human-centred innovation. The goal of this research was to identify ways to support people in activities they are completing in various situations, to propose new onboard experience concepts focused on empowering users. This will then be tested with users and businesses to assess desirability and sustainability of the concepts.
What do people want, do they want things?
Disclaimer: it wasn’t a straight sequenced process as presented in here, sorry. It might be like looking at an adult as a kid thinking “this person’s got their shit together” but now we’re all grown up, we know that person probably didn’t. Same way, the process wasn’t a straight sequenced one. It was a lot of scrapping, looking around, checking journalistic publication of all sorts, looking at conversations happening online, and even memes (such a good tool for broad insights). At some point I started to connect the dots and make sense of all the information I had.
That being said, it made sense in my eyes, with my own lived experience and biases, even though I was trying to limit their impact on the research.
Activity 1 — Understanding what people are doing when driving
I remember my mom telling me she enjoys driving because it helps her find ‘me time’, think about different things she has to do or problems she needs to solve. So I wanted to know among a wider audience, what people do when driving. So I could compare with forecasted autonomous vehicles onboard activities.
Through a quick survey with 42 participants, I was able to identify key activities people do in a car beyond driving. Even though 42 participants is quite small for statistical relevance, it gives an indication; Answers show a clear direction in “thinking & meditating” as a major activity.
The forecasted AVs experiences and the current activities as a driver are miles away (🥁) from one another. That’s ok, that’s what radical innovations are for, disrupting other industries (and behaviours) that this industry originally addresses.
However, we’re shifting from “no brainer tasks” allowing people to have time for themselves, towards cognitive engaging tasks, focusing on consuming or producing values. The cult for attention is already creating issues, as the work by Center for Humane Technology explains in their podcast, or recent Netflix (no jokes) produced the documentary The Social Dilemma.
So what?
At the end of the day, the shift to a passenger position prevents frictions that allow background cognitive activities. Activities considered as good for mental health such as thinking about random topics, meditating and planning the day ahead are disappearing.
Those background cognitive activities bring better results regarding human autonomy, and it matters for businesses too. Here comes the academic part to explain why:
Research conducted in 2014 shows a positive correlation between boredom and creativity . Boredom helps to restore the perception that one’s activities are meaningful or significant. Boredom & mind-wandering tends to make people more goals oriented and think about the future (E.g. planning the day ahead) as well as being more productive.
In a 2017 Ted Talk, Manoush Zomorodi activities resulting from boredom are fuelling “creative problem solving”.
Just a quick reminder, customers are also employees. Designing large scale services like autonomous vehicles in which people are consuming entertainment & working non-stop is approvishing cognitive skills. This is a threat to the qualified workforce companies are looking for filling the non-automatised jobs.
Activity 2— Understanding analogous behaviours focusing on human empowerment
Eventually, I started to map trends. I started to structure things I saw (still with my own eyes), researching additional information that would be low signals on the way people would try to take back time for themselves. I’ve identified two key trends:
First trend: The will to disconnect, the incapability to do so
This trend can be caracterised by the quest for “me time”. This meditation time can be characterized by yoga and self-meditation as both of them are booming in most western cultured countries. Apps designed to give easy access to meditation such as Calm which has been downloaded 26M times and claims 50 000 new users every day (2018), Headspace with 16M downloads (2017) or even Petit Bambou, claiming 1,5M subscriber and 400 000 user each week, just in France ( 2018) are on the rise.
On the other hand though, even if people advocate and look for opportunities to disconnect, they need support. In France for instance, 62% of employees declare they keep on answering e-mails and professional calls during the holidays. Social factors such as the Fear Of Missing Out (FOMO) and the Fear Of Being Offline (FOBO) are pushing people to stay connected. To balance this, governments like Germany and France adopt laws giving people the right to disconnect. In the same vein, silent retreats are on the rise, forcing people to radically disconnect.
Second trend: The quest for learning
From office work to holidays to relationships, the urban population is looking for meaning and purpose. This process has two facets; an external one, relative to the impact one has on its environment and an internal one, relative to the ways one structures their environment for it to have a positive impact on themselves.
First sign of this trend is relation people have with their work. 74% of employees report that they want a job where they feel their work matters. (sorry, here’s another Millennials article). For instance, there’s a rise in Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) like Coursera, Edx, etc. The interest in Coursera, is such that 3 years after being lauched, 2.1 millions completed a course (although that’s 4% of all users watching at least 1 course lecture). The number of MOOCs has rose from 0 to over 9000 in 6 years. The traction MOOCs have isn’t going to stop as forecasts predict a CAGR of 36,02%. According to a paper written by University of Pennsylvania researchers, students’ main reasons for taking a MOOC are advancing in their current job and/or satisfying curiosity.
A second aspect of this quest to learn is the attraction towards platforms to discuss current events. Among them we can mention Quora, but also Kialo. Both of them are enabling people to share opinions and perspectives on theories, and aim at driving discussions in a reasoned manner. While Kialo is a new service launched in 2017 it’s hard to measure the number of users, however, Quora claimed in September 2018 having 300 Million monthly unique visitors.
With those trends in mind, I wanted to define autonomous vehicles’ onboard requirements to support people in owning their onboard experience. The next part focuses exaclty on that; defining design requirements to support people.
Activity 3: Understanding in depth passengers’ midnset and defining requirements to provide an experience focusing on empowerement
To understand key activities as a passenger, I’ve interviewed people in order to not only know what they do, but understand why they do what they do. This enabled me to scope requirements to help people to do what they set-out to do.
Questions asked:
1.You have 1 minute to list every activities that can be performed during your commute.
2.Rank the one you do the most frequently to the one you do the least frequently.
Why are those activities on top and those one at the bottom?
3.Is there any activities you would like to do more of?
Why isn’t it possible?
4.Is there any activities you would like to do less of?
Why isn’t it possible?
Interview results are relative to the experience as a passenger (train, public transportation, taxi and plane). While most interviewees declared they are still listening to music, activities such as working, reading a book, or consulting social media are starting to apear. On the other hand, all activities related to “using the time to think/mediating” “looking around” “taking time to plan the day ahead” are non-existent. The relationship with friends and relatives are shifted from “calling” to “texting”.
To explain the change of behaviours, people reported they feel they have to answer when they get a message or a call. They also reported that the choice of onboard activity was depending on what they have to do, for instance if usually cycling to the office, some people mentionned taking public transport to complete work while commuting. I observed a shift from “what I want to do” towards “what I have to do” as main decision making driver for commuting activities.
So in the end, what do people gain and loose from being a passenger?
Users gain the ability to work, read and consult social media. In a sense, users are empowered to do what they want to do. Interviewed participants noted that they would like to use more of their commute as a me time, to read, be in touch with friends and family. While having their hands free from a wheel, they can. However, coming back to Lessig’s model of influences of behaviours, it’s not only because people can do something that they will do so; other external influences will drive decision making (social norms, legal and financial incentivisation).
Interviews show that people would rather text friends and relatives than calling as they don’t want other users to listen to their conversations. Reading is complicated as books get forgotten, too many changes, not enough space (have ever used the London tube or Parisian Metro?).
From the research and interview, I identified 3 key requirements focusing on empowering autonomous vehicles users:
Requirement #1 Users need to feel in a safe and comfortable environment.
Interviewees declared that a lot of their onboard activity was conditionned by their ease. Conversations over the phone wouldn’t happen in public transportation for privacy concerns. They would read a book depending on sitting situation or lightning.
Requirement #2 The onboard experience has to be customizable and programmable.
The main frustration came from the lack of flexibility of the environement. Three behaviours are converging towards this realisation. First, people plan before their commute, book, snack, having a charged phone. The second was that most interviewees would like a reliable Wi-Fi in public transportation to access something they didn’t download prior to travelling such as music, podcasts, an article, a netflix episode, etc. Finally, almost all interviewees reported that their favourite transportation mode was rarely the one they use on a regular basis. They would focus on efficiency during their daily commute.
Requirement #3 The onboard experience should assist users to get “me time”.
Interviewees reported external factors such as peer pressure to choose their activity. While interviewees see the commute as “me time”, they reported prioritizing what they have to do in opposition to what they want to do. This, for instance, can be concretized through answering messages and call, or working, in opposition to reading, listening to podcast and just mind wandering.
That was part 2, defining design requirements for the autonomous vehicle onboard experience to empower users. In the next part, I’ll explore potential solutions, test these with users and through a business lense as well. I’ll also talk about ethics (and electric shocks). In the mean time, part 1 is here.
Since you’re still here, to write this thesis in 2018 & publish in 2020 I’ve got support from a few people I would like to mention because they are amazing:
Rita Cervetto
Paola Craveiro
Nick de Jong
Robert Potts
Lauren Purkhiser
Mike Ryan
Paul Wagner
Alys Woodhead
& the teams at diffferent Berlin & Hyper Island UK
