Pod as a service
AHA - A Human Approach
AHA - A Human Approach
November 2020 - December 2020
We were four people involved in this. Me one, team leader, one programmer and one visual designer.
.png)
AHA II is a research project that focuses on the future development of mobility services by involving scientists, digital designers, city planners and with a high participation of residents. AHA II is collaborative project between Halmstad University, Volvo Cars, the City of Gothenburg, the City of Helsingborg, Västtrafik and Skånetrafiken.
Design challenge
The client needed a concept of how a sharing system would be designed for a car. They described is as a pod and that would be able to transport up to four people and luggage. Since AHA is a research project they also wanted insights on carpooling hence two research questions were summarized.
Research
There already exists a lot of research of the future mobility services which also include environment and attitudes. One potential future scenario focuses on shared mobility, ownership and economy. This scenario also include that people highly trust technology as well as value their time. During the process this was the potential future scenario we had in mind.
In regards to this scenario we conducted a survey in order to understand which target group that would have the most use of a share mobility service. After responses from the survey the project was restricted to one target group which was people living in urban cities that don't own a vehicle.
With a target group set interviews were performed with 9 people. The interviews were about how the respondents felt about mobility, carpooling and sharing. From this data I created a persona, John Persson, in order to achieve a common perspective within the design team of the average user goals and frustrations.
After a clear understanding of the personas goals and frustrations a user journey was assembled to figure how a natural booking would occur. Out of this user journey different ideas started to emerge.
In the sketching process the main focus was to get a feeling how a booking could easily be done, how to encourage to carpool and how to communicate with the people you carpool with.
During the sketching phase we came up to that the concept needed to work for three scenarios.
Some concepts of a booking of the upcoming booking system.
Early versions of different parts of the concept.
The best elements of the sketches were converted to wireframes which were later connected as a prototype. The prototype was tested through the three earlier scenarios without users. It was also evaluated with Nielsen's 10 heuristics. After the tests the prototype was iterated further till it was ready for actual user tests.
After a prototype had been made usability tests were performed. The user were asked to perform different tasks, similar to the three scenarios in order to test different parts of the concept. We performed usability tests twice with 5 users.
Iterations
If a user need to travel to a certain place a map function was implemented which showed if there were any booking for that area that week. These areas initially had different border colors. However after testing the colors were withdrawn since it was perceived as confusing.
It was also changed so the current week was more highlighted and also that user could change the week in the same view.
A function was implemented that made it possible for users to ask others to carpool with them. After user testing an aspect which arose was that perhaps a user needs an answer within a certain time after sending a request. Therefore it was also added that can set a time which expires if he / she sends a request.
At first there was a calendar function for the user to see available times. Initially this was mean to give the user an overview. Later a user asked why he could not book directly through the calendar. There were no reasonable answer why he was not able to. Hence it was then added.
A page where the user can se the profiles bookings.
A overview of bookings to certain areas.
.png)
A calendar view of bookings.
If a user asks to change a booking other users that are affected it needs to be approved.
As well as designing a concept of a carpooling system within a apartment building the project were also focused on answering two research questions. During interviews and testing the responds were analyzed. For each research questions the insights were summarized in two tables.
