5 Designers in the Driver’s Seat
Envisioning the Future of Social Interactions in Automobiles with 99P labs
Envisioning the future of social interactions in cars is no small task but it’s one that our MHCI Capstone team is ready to face head-on with 99P Labs. The range of possibilities is daunting. A plethora of social interactions, multiple contexts for users and mobility, different human behaviors in cars, and new and emerging technology left the team with a flurry of questions only research could answer. This series will keep you up to date on how we’re answering those questions and provide a behind-the-scenes look at our design process.
We are an energized and motivated team staring down an exciting and generative problem space. All that’s left to do is hop in the virtual car and hit the accelerator!
Our Virtual Carpool
I’ve been in industry for 10 years, with experience spanning roles in advertising strategy, branding, product management, and design. Most recently, I lived in Singapore for three years working on UX and product design with startups.
Before coming to Carnegie Mellon to sharpen my UX skills, I worked in a variety of product development roles in companies of various sizes, and I received a Master’s in Information Science from UC Berkeley. As an automotive enthusiast, I’m excited to work with 99P Labs on designing the future of social interaction in automobiles!
As a recent graduate with Psychology and Computer Science degrees from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, I am interested in how human-centered design can support human well-being and bring about positive societal change. I came to MHCI to build my UX research and design skills before beginning my career in industry. I am so excited to explore the space of technology-assisted social interaction from a novel perspective!
I am a research-driven product designer with an undergraduate degree in Industrial Design from the Rhode Island School of Design. Before coming to MHCI, I worked as a UX designer in an IoT toy startup and UCLA’s HCI research lab. My curiosity about people’s needs and emerging technologies drive my passion, and I am looking forward to creating prototypes to explore the future of social interaction in automobiles together.
Formerly an aspiring corporate lawyer who studied business at Georgetown University, I pivoted into the digital innovation space on an off-chance opportunity to be a part of an innovation incubator at a global corporate finance firm. A lover of puzzles both cosmic and quantum and a storyteller with unbounded wonder, I can’t wait to dive deeper into the future of the mobile social experience with you and your team at 99P Labs!
Kicking It All Off
The pandemic has touched all of us and this project was no different. We are the first MHCI Capstone group to tackle fully remote kickoff meetings with our clients. Our team braved a Zoom apocalypse, a participant dealing with a runaway dog in real-time, and everything in-between (the dog was, thankfully, safely recovered!). That being said, we had a great time exploring the problem space, learning about 99P Labs, and shaping what success would look and feel like for our project.
We intentionally designed our kickoff meetings with 99P Labs to not only help us align on an understanding of the project brief, but to have some fun and explore the problem space together. We developed a set of generative activities that allowed us to creatively blow up assumptions and get us all thinking about the many possible futures of social interaction in cars. We developed both a mind-mapping activity around what you would need the car to do if you were stuck in it for 24 hours and had to go about your normal day, and a visioning activity that asked the clients to envision a future state that is so stellar that it landed the company on the cover of a well-known magazine.
We learned, we laughed and we overcame technical adversity together…
Sprint 1 Remote Research — Don’t Get Ready, Get Started!
With 3 successful remote kickoff meetings to clarify goals for the project, the team turned to our most pressing research questions. As a team, we listed all of our questions on a Figma board, sorted, and ranked them.
Due to the large scope and breadth of possible users involved in our opportunity space, we focused our initial research on understanding broad behaviors in cars. To keep us centered, we braved the matrix: a 2-by-2 design matrix. Using it, we parted interactions into two broad planes, in-person and remote, and people experiences in two wide segments, own car and no car.
Keeping course of our matrix, we split our team into two directions for rapid research in sprint 1:
- Research around people who use their own car regularly
- Research around those who chose alternate forms of transportation (rideshare, taxi, rental)
Within these two areas we are looking to discover the following:
- What’s important to people in their cars or cars they’re riding in
- Understanding what people are doing in cars during their trip and why they are doing it
- Understand how social interactions play into their journey before, during and after
To augment this primary research, we are planning on conducting expert interviews with engineers and adjacent mobility innovation teams at 99P Labs.
What’s Next?
Over the next few weeks our team will conduct primary and secondary research and put what we learn to use by refining our research plan continually and look to move into more detailed remote ethnography and prototyping as our direction becomes more clear.
Here’s a sneak peak into some of the areas we are curious about moving forward:
- Kitchen table on wheels — validating our assumption that important and emotionally charged conversations often happen in cars.
- Operating or cooperating system on wheels — what role or roles does the car play in people’s lives? What role could it play?
- Imagining the role social interactions in cars will play in post-pandemic society.
That’s all for now. Catch you on the open road.
