Research, Prototyping, Design, Writing
2019
1 Interaction Designer
6 month
Every year, individuals lose their lives in traffic accidents triggered by human errors. The automotive industry intends to create autonomous driving to fix this issue by getting rid of the greatest safety issue, the driver himself. But in this area, the industry faces major problems with law regulations and technological difficulties. In collaboration with Volvo cars and Volvo’s vision, that no one should be killed or seriously injured in a new Volvo by 2020. This dissertation investigates how human errors created by emotional driving or bad driving styles can be minimized with the help of artificial intelligence assistance instead of using fully autonomous driving vehicles. Along with Volvo Car’s design strategy including safety, intelligence, modern, and warmth, a concept has been created in which cars can detect human emotions.
The outcome of the Thesis is an app connected to a car rental service. While negative emotions are hard to prevent, the service behind the app plays with Prevention, Education, and Motivation to be the test driver in traffic situations. The thesis resulted in an app that is linked to a car rental service. While negative emotions are difficult to avoid, the app's service focuses on prevention, education, and motivation of negative effects of emotions on driving, so that the driver gets the best possible support in driving and safety.
The Design Process explains the author's journey from the problem he has discovered to the challenge of solving it. In the context of this challenge, the author used a the Design Thinking Design Framework and different Design Methodology for the different stages in Design Thinking. This helps to work user-centric and to ensure that the outcome solves the problem as well as possible.
The Empathize Stage is about gaining empathy and understanding of the problem that should be solved.
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The literature review is a critical essay that summarizes and evaluates the literature on a specific topic. Summarize, in terms of results or claims from prior research efforts on the topic.
The content of the investigated studies mainly focuses on the role of emotions and their negative effects on driving and safety. During the literature review, it became clear that research on positive emotions lacks empirical evidence and needs further research. Moreover, it becomes evidential from the literature review, that the most frequently studied emotions are: anger and sadness, and less considered were happiness and joy, surprise and fear.
Reviewed Topics :
Basic Emotions, different Emotion Models, How to track an emotion?, Body language and Biometrics, Artificial Intelligence, Sensor Fusion, Non - Visual User Interaction, Ubiquitous computing, Gamification, EU law for car safety 2022, Levels of Autonomous driving, Car Sharing, Data Privacy.
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Qualitative research is primarily concerned with exploratory research and aims to gain an understanding of a topic.
I considered qualitative research because the subject of emotions and driving is too complex to be encapsulated by a simple yes or no hypothesis. Qualitative research techniques are richer and more insightful in the underlying reasons and patterns within phenomena. In order to conduct Qualitative research different Methods were used:
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Interviews are used to gather qualitative data about a specific topic.
In total, I interviewed three different experts within the field. The first, Interview was a "Specialist in Data Analysis" at Volvo cars. He is focused on the development of Machine learning applications. The second interview was a "Psychologist, with a focus on behavioral therapy" The Third interview was a "Costumer Researcher at Volvo Cars", and focused on user research.
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The findings of the Empathising phase got analyzed and structured into an Affinity Diagram for a better overview.
In the case of anger, it got investigated that anger is a universal facial expression. This means that anger has high generalizability across cultures. Another investigation is that, according to the research, anger and stress have a connection, which is a valuable insight for further steps in this project.
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The investigated user belongs to the age group, described as Millennials (also known as Generation Y and born between 1980 and 2000), who grew up with electronics, the Internet and online social communities, spending 18 hours a week on their smartphone and likely to be college graduates.
A user is a person who moved to a bigger city where his job is located. The user lives in areas where space is costly. Rents are high and it’s hard to get parking space. Cars in big cities mean commitment, because of parking place have to be rented out and insurances have to be paid. The user is more likely to avoid such commitments.
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The investigated user needs are defined in 9 points, the most important needs are:
• A user needs a seamless and trouble-free journey to his destination.
• A user needs intelligence that minimizes the user’s cognitive workload.
• A user needs minimal interaction.
• A user needs support to minimize driving errors.
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In-depth interviews are conducted with a target group (4.2.1 The User) of people within the topic. The in In-depth interviews helps to get a deeper understanding of the target group perspectives, attitude, problems, needs, ideas, or environment.
I expect from the In-depth Interview to investigate which findings from Data gathering and Affinity Diagram created by literature review, Questionnaire, and the Expert Interview are coherent with the user, user’s activities and the user needs.
In order not to waste valuable time and resources of people, a pilot study of the In-Depth Interview took place. Piloting an in-depth interview is an integral aspect and useful in the process of conducting qualitative research as it highlights the major study’s improvisation.
In the Define stage the problem Statement is defined. The problem statement is defined by the findings from the empathy stage that are collected, analyzed and sorted into a well - defined problem statement, which in return helps to create possible solutions in the ideation stage to solve the problem statement.
The ideation stage is based on the problem statement and the understanding of the users and their needs, ideas can be generated to identify new solutions to the problem statement.
Prototyping is an experimental stage, the aim is to identify the best possible solution to the defined problem. A number of low-cost, scaled-down versions of the solution are produced and tested to explore problem solutions. Finally, the constraints of the solution and the problems that occur will be better understood. The Test stage should identify the best solutions or prototype in order to iterate or implement. It is very often in these steps that design fails and new insights lead to a redesign that needs to be re-tested.
This design took the results from Summative Usability Evaluation into account in order to create the final design of my design solution called Volvo Intuit.
