-NISM
We have been dreaming of self-driving since vehicles are invented. The automation desire came from our ancestors, their means of transport are always self-driving and smart. (Horses)
And deep inside us, our subconscious minds still resonate to a connection with our transports, it can be a relationship, or it can be a way of communication.
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Four historical stages – As our history shows, we were very familiar with building co-working relationships in the transportation and mobility sector, but the Industrial revolution put us into a position of fully in control of where we are going, and the relationship for transportation has become personal less relationship building with the transport. With self-driving technology, we may have to re-learn and adapt to the new norm of building up relationships again with the imperfect system to reform a co-working relationship. The past way of commuting of our ancestors is still not too far away from us, but far enough for modern society to relearn building relationships with its tools. It is a back and forth reliance building process, and L3 is the important starting point of history.
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We have been driving for almost 100 years, but this journey of mobility is about to change once Level 3 autonomy is ready. It is for the first time after we no longer use horses as our personal transportation means to enjoy the freedom of self-driving. A ride with an intelligent system. But still, Level 3 is still away from full autonomous level5. The reason Level 3 autonomy is important is that the driving status of drivers changes from not driving but should still be attentive to the road condition and requires hands on the steering wheel to the state of eyes and mind being free from road conditions and hands off the steering wheel. Level 3 autonomy allows drivers to do anything from watching online content to having a proper conversation with passengers or sending emails. In the past, human-animal collaboration and co-working relationships have already re-educated us on how to again build a relationship with a system you could possibly rely on, but still not yet perfect. We have lost this ability since public transportation and private-owned cars have been popular since FOR T-Model was launched and the cars after it. We have been used to fully relying on ourselves and everything is under our own control, but now again building relationships with non-living systems also requires us partially give out control. We are now feeling strongly about the unknown future of this technology. I have deeply looked into history, psychology, neural science, and also a mental model of how we could make people rely on and build a better relationship with this new autonomous driving Level 3 technology in a few years from now- the mass implementation of Self-driving technology. Currently, most users have difficulties either rationally understanding and utilizing the service and the car or are driven away from the technology by being overly concerned by its trustworthiness. We have designed a service system to fully help people to adopt and embrace this technology for their better benefit.
Four stages of the relationship
How could you trust me if you don't see what I see?
How can we build the reliance between us and a smart system?
I try to dig deeper and find out the reason and psychological side of the reference so we could know the foundation of our trust-building need and what current areas of research could help us to transit from where we are now to the future.
Research Conclusion: The reliance between humans and AI systems should be seen as a co-working relationship in that each party has to contribute and has its own limitations. Only in this way, a proper mindset and expectation for users can be set.
Otherwise, the user might either be overly ignoring the system's capability by using their own judgments or overly reliant on the system's capability without knowing the system has a limited condition for its use.
The whole process of the research is a long time of interviewing and chatting with industry-leading experts, from neuroscientists to Researchers in AI and its directions or computer speech analysis. Doctor Flory was the leading scientist we spoke to regarding human perception.
For this specific stage of self-driving L3. Hands are off the steering wheel most of the time, a humanized system is not the most efficient and proper way to demonstrate and help users to fully utilize the self-driving system.
Industry-standards and brand values are important to build user reliance.
The Industry is slow to the new trend of digitalization, which happens to be the best place for user reliance on smart systems to build up. User recognition and service reputation can be easier built by other digital touch points in the user's life and gradually give the user a sense of reliance on other aspects of the brand.
Self-driving system reliance doesn't come overnight.
The market is huge, but what are the roles of the current manufacturers?
Traditional manufacturers tend to have self-driving in both private-owned sectors to keep selling products and services like what they previously do, or expand the market on car-sharing or hailing market. Many Manufactures starts to acquire businesses that have the capability of developing self-driving technology to make sure they could in the future have the possibility have their own service system covering from private to sharing market of self-driving service.
Capital is behind it, many Chinese internet tech Giants have taken their bet on the company they want to invest in. As data and user detail may help largely on self-driving and its further benefit in the future transportation business. Also, traditional manufacturers are not connected directly with the customers, feedback normally is slow and indirect. With a new perspective on the future transportation business, the tech Giants are changing and using their experiences in online business and turning/ helping some of the current manufacturers into a much more eco-system-based service-oriented business (in the longer term). Now computer chips, computing power, along with sensors have become the new essentials for the car industry. Traditional ways are no longer viable in the future. Post pandemic world is also pulling more technology to be used in daily life, self-driving is one of them.
About the Design
We collaborate with NIO as a brand famous for its customer experience and its brand ecosystem strategy. Also, the brand value of trustworthiness and reliability is also very close to our project goals. NIO is expanding its market current in Europe the best time for a new localized service strategy.
As we have found out everything from the industry trends and economic trends, we now need to fully understand compare to what we have researched from the very beginning on people's reliance on self-driving service L3. What do people really think of it, when they first encounter one. Simulator in real life – To further validate our design, we constantly invite users to test with us from all age groups to try if our service is desirable, viable, and functioning well (inclusiveness)
Also, other approaches have been used to test out user mental models, regarding different scenarios of future self-driving. Above are two mock-up newspapers made for 2030.
CO-creating workshops, interviews, and meetings with NIO. The user mental model is the Key for us to constantly test and correct our service that helps users understand the self-driving car's intention.
The final whole process is incisive and highly interactive, we use the frequency that can be easily in the future translated into haptics for people with hearing issues, also the visual cues we design for the self-driving communication service have considered the color blind group as well. Even though we had a memory test, two set our design and current design on market to test which one can be much better remembered in 2 weeks once the candidates have been introduced to the system. In order to see the maximum result of our design.
Matching up user mental model Screen and Sound Synchronization
It is extremely important to make sure each screen and its movement is aligned with what our users expect at the right time with the right sound.
Testing, Motion and Sound Synchronization, user test. A loop to make sure things all happen at the right time without any confusion.
Conclusion: For the current industry, there is a need to build an introduction to the future possible users to properly understand why self-driving is important, and why NIO need to spend a large amount of time and money developing a system to help people better understand and adopt it. It is a portal to the future subscription business, also it is a very important part of the service eco-system. Thus a better presented, caring inclusive, and ethical system service is needed.
For the business viability, it is vital to have a service to guide and help people when self-driving could merge in late 2025 as a relatively accessible technology to many new first-time early majorities to guide them through this journey for better utilize and keep using and refining the service as well.
