Aura — an explorative experience to create encounters

Manu Revi, Nancy Valerdi, Lea Bachmann and Connie Jehu

Aura is an eco-system that facilitates engagement opportunities for visitors and residents by raising awareness of the presence of people, local businesses and nature along route 363 through ambiguity and change of pace.

Watch the video below to get a glimpse of what Aura is.

What would we notice if we slowed down?

Aura triggers the driver to lower their speed and interact in form of visuals and sounds that are ambiguous to spark their curiosity on what surrounds them. Playful sounds are used to draw people in and make them guess what they are hearing at that very moment.

The aim is to make people aware of what is out there and help them feel more connected to the environment they are moving through, through sounds and visuals.

What is Aura?

The aura eco-system consists of two components, the aura product and the aura application. Aura comes as an invitation from the community to explore Route 363.

The system takes place on and along the road

Anyone, including residents, Region Västerbotten or local business owners who are in the region and who have the Aura application can upload messages and sounds to the road related to anything that could be of interest for people moving along the road. Messages and sounds are then ‘placed along the road’ at different ‘speed ranges’ so that people travelling at different speeds will have access to different messages.

Someone with the Aura device driving along the Route 363 will receive a trigger in form of a visuals to catch their attention and raise awareness, that something or ‘presence’ is around them. The driver can use their speed to ‘tune into’ different speeds and get access to different types information along the road. Aura encourages people to change their pace and slow down to access information that they would otherwise miss out on when driving at a faster speed.

If the driver and their passenger like what they hear they can choose to pull over, stop, get out of the car and have an encounter with people, local businesses or simply connect with the nature around them.

A system for people with different needs

Aura is a system that can encourage engagement for different people, with different needs, agendas and motives. Aura wants to embrace the diversity of people moving and living along the road by catering for different people who move at different paces.

It caters to those who have time, want to explore and are willing to change pace, slow down and discover what around them. But it also caters for those driving from A to B because they are running errands or commuting to work.

For people who want to explore…

Aura allows someone who is a short term visitor on holiday to discover hidden gems, have chance encounters with nature or with people that they would have otherwise never met. Watch Oscar and Wilma’s experience of using Aura to find out about different experiences along the road.

Aura catches their attention to spark curiosity through a blinking light and a subtle, ambiguous sound to create awareness of the presence in the area they are driving through. As soon as they choose to slow down, an ambiguous sound increases until they have reached the right speed and the light becomes static. Now they can choose to access to the information and listen to more information about the presence in the form of a voice message.

…and people who have somewhere to get to

Aura can also be used as a new way of creating and reinforcing connections between other visitors and locals or simply create better engagement opportunities between people who live in the area and drive along that route multiple times per week.

Watch how Aura allows Herin to have an encounter on her journey by helping out someone on the road.

In this video, you can see how Herin was driving at a higher speed along the road. However, she was still able to access messages that suit the speed that she is travelling at. Lovisa needs a package to be delivered in a town further up Route 363 so Herin can easily pick that up for her by visiting Rolf the farmer who lives along the way. In this way, Aura has allowed Herin and Rolf to make a connection with each they would have missed otherwise, while doing something practical for someone else in the community.

How can someone along the road input their messages to the road?

How we got there…

Our project team of this project consists of 4 designers:

Connie Jehu, Lea Bachmann, Nancy Valerdi and Manu Revi.

The brief

We started off with the brief that was given to us:

Find a sustainable and feasible mobility solution for the visitors and local food in a sparsely populated Biosphere Reserve, along Road 363 and the Vindeln River Valley.

…do not just solve the mobility challenge as such, but also provoke a behavioural change towards a convivial society.

The research

Together with our classmates we went on a 5 day field trip, lived with locals, overall talked to 83 people along the way and got to experience and explore the following:

1. The different kinds of mobility and modes of transport along route 363
2. Talk to local communities, businesses, locals and other visitors and understand their perspectives and experiences better
3. As well as enjoy the slow pace of life of the Vindeln river valley region

Our insights

During our research field trip we identified that there were different problems, which we noticed and found interesting, such as the mentality of the people, the communities as well as the mobility along the road.

We found out that many people that move along Route 363 have an A to B travel mentality — which means people travel through the communities without stopping or engaging with local businesses and people living there.

We also learned that there is a increasing lack of connection between the communities along the road 363.

And while travelling ourselves we found that we were missing information about all the opportunities along the road for us to engage and discover.

Co-creation with stakeholders, locals, visitors, tutors and students

With all our research insights and discovered problems we came up with a co-creation workshop to dig deeper into the values of the region and find out how everyone involved would imagine their “ideal holiday in 10 years” would look like.

The most insightful answers of our participants were:

1. The majority like to travel spontaneously and decide on what to do on the go.
2. People enjoy a slower pace and like to relax and slow down.
3. People enjoy meeting with and speaking to locals along the way to learn more about the region.

A session of ‘provotyping’…

After the co-creation workshop we got back together and started ideating and building ‘provotypes’ based on our findings. The provotypes were around themes that became really interesting to us, the slow pace lifestyle, learning more about the opportunities along the road, playing with different driving modes of slow vs. fast and sending messages or sounds with opportunities.

Our inspiration and approach…

One of the most interesting insights from the provotyping phase was, that we were working with various opposite tensions.

We realised there are people with different motives and needs along the route. There is a contrast in the pace at which people move and the pace of nature. There is a tension between the people driving, who are in a bubble in their car and the outside world. We also explored how we could spark curiosity by playing with tension of ambiguity and the obvious.

Our challenge

Based on the ideation and some initial ‘provotyping’ we set ourselves a challenge.

How can we use existing mobility to enhance encounters by building on the values of the region to strengthen the community?

Further prototyping

With that question we went into another round of prototyping to prepare materials for user testing.

The goal was to create an explorative tool that drives users to connect with the environment that they are moving through in different and new ways.

It was important to us that we did not create some kind of navigation system nor a platform that would cater or end up as an advertising platform.

User tests along route 363

We brought our prototypes to the people we met through our field trip and asked them to run user tests with us driving along Route 363.

Our main insights from the user tests were:

1. Need of really simple visuals, that do not distract and are easily noticeable while driving.
2. Confirmation that ambiguous sounds foster curiosity.
3. The personal voice recordings made users smile and created a first connection to someone along the road, by giving people along the road a voice.

From prototyping to our final concept Aura

Following various iterations of provo- and prototyping we reached our final concept: Aura, an explorative experience to create encounters.

From our challenge…

How can we use existing mobility to enhance encounters by building on the values of the region to strengthen the community?

To our final concept…

Aura, a concept that combines existing mobility, the values of the Vindeln river valley region and the different needs of people living and moving along the road.

The impact

The eco-system aura does not just provoke a behavioural change towards a more convivial society and a more sustainable way of moving but also creates more empathy for the region by embracing existing resources and building on the value of the region. It supports and builds a more collaborative mindset between people by raising awareness of presence and giving people along the road a voice to build new connections and create chance encounters.

Last but not least…

We want to thank all of the people we met along the way, the communities, locals, stakeholders, tutors and actors. We could not be more thankful because this project would have not been possible without your support. Thank you!