The Lighthouse Group

Team

Deliverables

Design fiction            Video production
Exhibition design      User experience
App design                 Branding
Motion graphics        Graphic design

Research Methods

Collage
Bodystorming 
Persona
Focus Group

Making driverless buses safer and better together.

As the technology developing, self-driving buses may deeply involve in people’s daily life in the future, the risks of accounability, equality, automation, and more are increasing. How to create a solution for our society to manage the complex risks together is essential.

What’s the relationship between bus and passengers in the future?
How might we turn passengers into contributors and help engage community building?

Final deliverables

1. A campaign:

• A short film to engage people to be a part of the organization
• Build trust and community
• Get people familiar with the Blackbox app.

2. Blackbox App

• Information of the bus
• Issue report
• View of the bus on the road-see what the bus can see

       
        Live prototype

Onboarding pages

Process

Our solution

The Lighthouse group is a non-profit organization helps managing risks of self-driving vehicles. 

About the future

As self-driving vehicles are still underdevelopment, we had ourself imagine how self-driving vehicles could be in 5, 10, 50years in the aspect of legal, effectiveness (from consumers perspective), and Power (From companies perspective).

Situational persona

We developed the persona from the perspectives of:

• Person 
  

• Place 
• Situation - what happens, what are the activities
• Behaviour - what time do they take, what do they like, where are they going, why are they going, what do they see, smell…

Connecting data from current time to the future imagination 

We made a collage for visualizing data and connecting evidences based on local news, articles, reports related to risks of self-driving cars. 

What does it feel like to be in a self-driving vehicle?

We conducted bodystorming (Contextual Inquiry) that mimics self-driving cars on different stages high automation to full automation, and we asked volunteers of how safe they safe and what specific make them feel safe or unsafe.

Define

What risks should we focus on?

• Automation

        - unmanaged job losses

• Unaccountability

        - corporations not facing consequences for errors

• Inequality

        - new technologies driving economic and social divide

• Awareness

        - the risk of not knowing there's a risk

Ideatation

We realized that the world of self-driving cars is complicated, with a wide range of potential issues that could arise. We can either build a community that responds instantly to each situation or work to improve self-driving car technology to prevent these risks from occurring in the first place.

1. Blackbox app

As an app separate from manufactures, it makes data transparent for passengers and the information sharing in between them.

2. Accident Design Bureau (ADB)

A community that creates minor accidents for the people who have all the trust to the self-driving, create minor accidents may help them be aware of the existence of risks (faulty sense of security, awareness). 

Minor accidents could be 

1. Broadcast announcements get hacked and saying something threatening.
2. Unrecognizable or confusing road signs.

Testing

After the first prototypes finished, we conduct focus group and user testing. 

Analysis

Safety on board

• How to ensure appropriate behaviour
• What to do when you lose something on board
• How to ensure accessibility

Safety on the road

• Crash was considered both at fault
• "Car view" - what does the car "see"?

The driver

• Considered a figure of authority
• Give directions
• Adapt to different populations with different needs and wants

Trust

• Participants trust drivers more than driverless.
• "Wait and see" - who is testing? what kind of tests?

Iterations & Aims

Objective

Pieces of media that give understanding of the whole picture: 1. the world we’ve created 2. the organisation 3. its products

1. Not relying on technology to make decisions but just provide information
2. Empowering the passenger

• Ensuring safety onboard and on the road
  
• Ensuring transparency and accountability
  
• Create a strong community

Final deliverables

1. A campaign:

• A short film to engage people to be a part of the organization
• Build trust and community
• Get people familiar with the Blackbox app.

2. Blackbox App

• Information of the bus
• Issue report
• View of the bus on the road-see what the bus can see

        
        Live prototype

  Onboarding pages

Visual design

Showcase

The outcome is a speculative exhibition surrounding the risks of our current approach to artificial intelligence, specifically through the lens of self-driving public transport.

In self-driving vehicles, we see a visible and visceral microcosm of the risks brought about by our adoption of artificial intelligence. This exhibit shows one possible future that may be brought about, and one possible way in which human collaboration may help us live in it.