Design of an autonomous shuttle bus interior and service

A combination of methods improved the design

“Welcome on board!”, I said as a group of four co-creation participants entered the meeting room. We had marked a 3.2-metre by 1.2-metre rectangle on the floor with masking tape and asked our participants to imagine that they were travelling in an autonomous shuttle bus without a driver. “How would you as a group of travelers organise the interior of this shuttle bus to make yourselves feel most comfortable?”

The aim of this user-centred design project was to design a service concept and interior of a driverless shuttle bus. Fortum Design was interested in this transportation challenge, which could reduce the usage of private cars and therefore help to combat climate change. We identified the potential users of our future service as people who use a private car for commuting between home and the metro station on their way to work.

To boost the design process, we decided to use a set of methods:

• Preliminary interviews at Fortum’s facility
• Contextual interviews near the homes of participants when travelling to the metro station by car
• A co-creation session at Fortum’s facility
• The projective technique of collaging to understand emotion-based needs

We were not only concentrating on spending time in the context, but also conducted interviews and made use of co-creation with some ideas borrowed from psychology. Let me tell you more about these phases.

Preliminary interviews

We first interviewed people at Fortum’s facility to get a first impression of the needs of our potential target group. We wanted to understand their mornings and how they get to work, and how they perceived different transportation methods. During this phase we already got some ideas as to how a digital solution could serve these people, and what the hygiene factors were that needed to be taken into account when designing the service. We learned that people are not all the same — we need to understand the spectrum of different needs in order to design a service that works for all. For example, some people leave their homes every morning at the same time and make plans for weeks ahead, whereas others may need more flexibility when it comes to getting around.

Step out to discover the context …

Preliminary interviews were followed by contextual interviews. We visited the interviewees’ home areas and accompanied them on their typical route from home to the metro station.

As is well known, changing people’s behavioral patterns is difficult, and this is the case also when it comes to cutting down on the use of private cars. Consumers must feel that a service creates value or solves a problem in their everyday lives — and must certainly not cause new difficulties. By understanding consumers’ everyday lives, we learned about the problems that must be solved and how to nudge people towards more desirable behaviour.

Changing people’s behavioral patterns is difficult, and this is the case also when it comes to cutting down on the use of private cars.

To reach our interviewees in their everyday context, we woke up very early in the morning to discover the secrets of last-mile transportation. We reached out towards our potential customers before they went about their everyday tasks. These early-morning efforts paid off, as we gathered valuable insights about rush-hour traffic, packed buses and irritation when some people are slow in finding their bus tickets or money when others would like to get to work as soon as possible.

Contextual interviews proved to be an excellent way to get first-hand insights into how people’s mornings are, why private cars are the preferred means of transportation, and the needs and pain points of everyday life that we could address with our future service. Armed with all this information the group of designers created a first draft of the service, with nice mobile app screens and a description of the journey.

… or fake the context

After some internal design work, we wanted to validate our service concept with the same people and invited them to a co-creation session. Our aim was also to bring them together to co-design the interior of the vehicle. Because no autonomous shuttle buses existed to make the context real, we decided to fake the context.

We did not only want to understand the layout of the vehicle, but also to get the ambience right.

Let’s get back to the situation in which this whole story started. We welcomed our four participants on board as a group of strangers to each other. And we did not only want to create the interior of the vehicle but also to get the ambience right.

In the space of a half-hour or so, the participants tried out different layouts, and we came to the conclusion that the interior of the shuttle bus should not imitate a conventional bus. “Any lunatic could attack you from behind and there would not even be a bus driver around to intervene”, someone argued. We also learned that in a threatening situation caused by another passenger, notifying the contact centre could preferably be done discretely with a mobile app rather than with a touchscreen installed inside the shuttle bus. This finding challenged our preliminary interior design.

A little help from psychology

Next, I asked the participants to carry out a short exercise on emotions to determine how they would like to feel when travelling on the shuttle bus. I gave them a pile of magazines with plenty of pictures and asked them to prepare collages in pairs. They cut pictures from the magazines to create a representation of the kinds of emotive surroundings they would like to travel in to their workplaces or home. “I think this should be cool, an educated person’s way to travel”, said one of the participants. “And it’s also important to feel safe”, added another. “I would love to see Finnish brands sponsoring these shuttles and giving them an identity”, concluded the third. “And don’t forget the fresh coffee that makes my mornings”, said the fourth.

What to consider when designing something new

I wanted to share this case with you because I truly believe that by using a combination of methods and techniques it is possible to increase the value and reliability of design, which also ensures business success for the company.

My three key insights:

1. Conduct contextual interviews or make observations to obtain first-hand knowledge from your potential customers.

In our project, the only way to create first-hand experiences for our potential customers was to visit our participants and briefly take part in their everyday lives. During these short visits, we learned that people are not alike but are instead individuals with their own habits and behavioral patterns.

2. If there is no context available, try to fake it.

Faking the shuttle bus with masking tape and a couple of chairs and having “passengers” try out different layouts gave us valuable information. To make the most of the situation, we brought our participants together for the first time. In this way, the situation of being strangers together in the shuttle bus would feel as authentic as possible. Our initial layout of the shuttle bus included a touch screen that enables passengers to call for help if there were any difficulties on board. With the help of this exercise, however, we learned that it would be a provocative course of action to call for help via a touchscreen. Passengers would rather call for help discretely with their mobile phones.

3. When designing emotive surroundings, it might be worth trying out projective techniques or other psychology-driven methods.

Experience is everything, but how can ideas be probed for from people for something they have never experienced, and might not even be able to express? The use of a projective technique gave us ideas on how to take ambience into account in addition to creating the experience based on functional needs.