Sprint 1: Redefining Transportation Experiences with 99P Labs
Zooming into Sprint 1: Kickoff + Research Plan
Written by the MHCI x 99P Labs Capstone Team Members Mia and Andrea
How do we use telepresence to simulate human attendants in the next generation of people movers?
Answering this question is no simple task, and the journey to finding that answer includes many twists and turns along the way. However, our MHCI Capstone team is ready to take on the challenge with 99P Labs, and bring you along for the ride.
With two weeks in, we first started off with a lot of questions regarding human behaviors and attitudes towards telepresence, existing interactions with public people movers, and present and emerging models in the technology space. Ultimately, to help us better answer our myriad of questions, we completed:
- Part 1/2 of a successful kick-off call with 99P Labs
- An in-depth research plan to guide us through the exploration process as we narrow our scope.
All of which, we’re thrilled to share with you in this first entry, but before we continue, let’s meet all the travelers that are along for the ride.
Meet the Team:
We are a group of five Masters of Human-Computer Interaction candidates at Carnegie Mellon University beginning our eight-month capstone project journey. As we continue to update this series, look out for more play-by-play accounts of our trials, tribulations, and triumphs in navigating this project.
Healy Dwyer 🚃
Hi, I’m Healy! I have a background in software engineering and urban planning and spent the previous four years working for the railroad as a UX engineer and researcher. I am excited about robotics, transportation, and building systems that will improve human experiences. This year at CMU, I have been conducting research in the human-robot interaction space so I’m excited to build on that knowledge with this project.
- Loves all things transportation (especially bicycles)
- Descended from giraffes (I’m 6 foot 1!)
Mia Hofmann 🚌
Hi, I’m Mia! I come from a graphic design and new media studies background with professional experience in motion and environmental design. I’m passionate about all things design, and thus consider myself the ‘design generalist’ of the team. Shifting into the UX domain, I hope to create products that leave lasting impacts on their users.
- A ceramics fanatic!
- If I could have any super power it would be teleportation.
Kristian Pham 🚗
Hello, I’m Kristian! I graduated with a BFA in Graphic Design and a minor in art history and spent some time working as a professional graphic designer for a clean energy nonprofit in San Diego, CA. My obsession with design comes from understanding how design impacts the human psyche — an obsession that will serve 99P Labs with this problem, I’m sure!
- Loves dogs, coffee, cooking, and baking
- Isn’t afraid to bite into ice cream
Andrea Zhu 🚲
Hello! I’m Andrea. I previously studied Interior Architecture and had work experience in interactive exhibition design as well as real estate sales and marketing. I obsess over the details in spatial design, interaction design and prototypes, and most importantly, problem solving.
- Loves solving problems and keeping things organized
- Cat person, but a dog owner 🐕
Eleanor Hofstedt 🚎
Hi, I’m Eleanor! Prior to CMU, I worked in Product Operations at Facebook, where I was responsible for synthesizing user feedback on technical issues and project managing cross-functional teams. I also dabbled in UX Research and I’m excited to apply these experiences in the transportation space and learn more about autonomous vehicles and user behaviors as passengers.
- Loves knitting/crocheting, backpacking, and fantasy books
- Visited 48 U.S. states (so far)!
(Plus the additional amazing people who make this project possible):
Project Sponsors from 99P Labs
- Erin Clepper
- Joan Smith
Faculty Advisors
- Derek Wahila
- Jonathan Brown
Kick off Call
To plan for our virtual kick-off meeting, the team decided to split the meeting into two parts within the course of two weeks to reduce Zoom fatigue and make the most efficient use of our time. So far, we’ve completed the first half of our call, and are excited to move forward into the second half!
To plan for our second, longer meeting, the team wanted to create an experience that promoted collaboration and design thinking rather than a Q&A format in which sponsors are bombarded with open-ended questions. Thus, we designed an agenda that incorporated a number of interactive activities from a reversing assumptions game to an icebreaker activity for envisioning people movers of the future. In addition to encouraging a fun and open dialogue, we hope that these activities can further clarify and shape the problem space and inspire us to take our next steps into the research phase.
Mapping Out The Research
After the successful first Kick-off meeting, we want to deepen our understanding by building the foundation of our research plan. As a team, we created our research plan with takeaways, questions, and assumptions in mind.
The short term goal of our project is to research human behaviors and models associated with public people movers, as well as human interaction with AI, and synthesize findings to generate insights about the kind of controls and interactions that people want in shared vehicles.
We want to understand the current interaction with and acceptance of AI in other contexts/domains, and how these models might be applicable in the transportation sector. We also hope to understand how “current behaviors and associated models may change when an attendant on a public people mover is available via telepresence or a synthetic representation of an agent.” Another goal for us is to determine qualities of an attendant that are “most important and can be replaced or augmented by AI or telepresence.” In order to help us gain a better understanding of the users, we will define personas for the adoption curve in this market, especially early adopters and their behaviors/mental models. We then could generate insights to inform design of a prototype for a virtual or synthetic attendant on a public people mover.
In order to advance our research, we listed some research methods that could be used for this project including: literature review, stakeholder mapping, field observations, ethnography, diary studies, pretotyping, contextual inquiries, semi-structured interviews, storyboarding/speed dating, usability testing, empirical analysis, and surveys (quite the mouthful, haha). We created a non-exhaustive list of stakeholders that will be valuable to interact with during the research process. In order to help us stay on track at all times, we also listed milestones with dates for the entire research duration.
Changes inevitably will be made as we progress and dive deeper into this problem space. This plan serves as a guide for us to move forward with both generative research as well as evaluative and even predictive research.
Moving Forward
Our second kick-off meeting on this coming Friday will help us gain a more in-depth understanding of our stakeholders. We will bring our assumptions and hypotheses and work to dive into them through brainstorm activities with the clients.
Over the next few weeks our team will conduct initial generative research while continuing to refine our research plan and direction. We are excited to dive deeper into the questions and assumptions we have and to brainstorm the future of public transportation with each other and our awesome client, peers, and advisors!
Let’s keep the wheels rolling.
- Team MHCI x 99P Labs
