ABSTRACT: This project describes the design methods of discovering mobile interactions within the context of a connected vehicle experience. The project titled “Acuity” focuses on revealing a richer understanding of how users interact with today’s content on both mobile devices and the in car infotainment system. The result of this design process should help find various design insights and concepts to help make next generation infotainment systems integrate mobile devices in more seamless ways.

INSPIRATION: The source of inspiration was the continued growth and influence smartphones have in people’s daily lives, but how the friction or “distraction” this experience creates when it comes in contact with our driving context. What role should a mobile phone play within the context of the driving experience?

METHOD: The methods and approaches to this problem involved user interviews, contextual inquiry, competitive analysis, historical overview of the Smartphone, historical overview of the Infotainment system, future trends, and literature reviews. The research progressed into prototyping in paper, in digital, and finally an experience prototype to help build a higher fidelity engagement with the product. All these methods accumulated lead to an informed design solution.

STORYTELLING: When the Umea Institute of Design approached me to film and capture the social fabric of the school, I was thrilled to tell the story through video of what makes UID so unique as a design school. The goal of the video was to help prospective students understand both the social and academic balanced lifestyle at UID.

Here is a list I compiled about the many roles stories play in a design process:

• They explain research and ideas.
• They engage the imagination and spark new ideas.
• They create a shared understanding.
• They can persuade.

GAMEPLAY: The four week project began as a global look at behavioural changes, as it relates to recycling, conservation and better use of our finite resources; we used the metaphor of play as a tool to raise awareness and encourage green behaviors.

Team Members:
Amid Moradganjeh
George Paravantes

BRAINSTORM: Our group discussions began with looking at what makes games fun?, how do we create awareness in passive ways while people enjoy an activity?. What would be some rules to consider, as well as rewards and punishments while playing a game. These are a few of the attributes we considered when looking at what makes a game great.

Behavioural Observations: One of the first step we took was to get out of our studio and go out and see what people actually do day to day. We got permission to observe people while they shopped and recycled to document their behaviours. We observed both ends of users one’s who genuinely cared and other that were apathetic and showed indifference.

FOLLOW-UP: Another approach we took was to observe the amount of waste that people generate in a day. It was interesting to note the products and packaging people used and discarded. Furthermore the amount of awareness people had when it came to consumption or resources to make certain products.

FOCUS IN ON ISSUE: Although recycling gets a lot of attention. We decided it would be much more beneficial and have greater impact to look at the issue when people first purchase a product and educate them while they shopped in a passive playful way.

VIDEO DIARY: Each week we put together a video documenting our design focus and direction in the coming weeks.

RETAIL: While evaluating various retail experiences we began to realize that the shopping cart was an amusing area to focus in on, while offering the most potential to incorporate various behaviours.

SKETCHES: We used explorative sketches to discover and see what kind of scenarios and behaviours a cart would have in different retail experiences. The amount of sketches let us see a variety or interesting solution that had relevance.

VISUALIZE IMPACT: Another feature that is key to the Eco-Cart is the ability to sense and rate products based on their environmental impact. We looked at developing a rating system that would be credible and offer consumer at a glance information quickly about the eco impact of a product.

BUILD IT: During this stage we captured the idea of an Eco-Cart and the idea of a rating system for eco products. At this point we started making the cart tangible and working on the the fidelity of the graphics and how and where they would be incorporated on the cart. We quickly began prototyping and evaluating what worked and what didn’t.

ECO RATING SYSTEM: The labelling and rating of eco conscious products has to be credible we had conversations about how the numbers would be verified and by who. The stakeholders in rating these products would be from governmental and advocacy groups with input from industry. The reason to make labels easy for consumers is not to confuse them and make information available at glance.

ECO-SUMMARY: Another important aspect of this system is for the ability for consumers to have a eco summary of their retail experience. Scaling the system so it incorporates a reward function over time for good environmental shopping is meant to help create a “win win win” scenario for retailers, customers and environmental issues.

COOP MEETING: With all the work done thus far we approached a local grocery chain call COOP KONSUM and ask for assistance in filming the scenario. They eagerly we’re on board and offered their grocery retail environment to us, they also shared their green initiatives and offered advice and direction on the project.

PROTOTYPE: The shopping cart prototype was made to reproduce and discover behavioural aspects of the cart. The Steering angle, along with braking ability, and shaking of basket were attributes we incorporated. We used fiducials on various products and programmed them to react positively or negatively when placed in the cart if the accumulation of many negative products occurred then the cart would begin to act more erratic.

AND ACTION!!!: The final scenario was ready to begin filming at COOP KONSUM at Alidhem centrum. The purpose of the video is to narrate and give context to the Eco-Cart in a retail environment. We decided to film in parallel the experiences of two extreme uses, the eco conscious shopper and the indifferent negative shopper. The cart reacted to shoppers in both negative and positive behaviours.

SPECIAL THANKS: We would like to give special thanks to COOP KONSUM for their permission to film in their retail space. Also a special thanks to Joshua Treuhaft and Tatiana Mamaeva our talented actors that did a great job under such a tight schedule. Thanks again for all your hard work.

COLLABORATE: This ten week project was meant for Product Interaction and Transportation students to work in teams, to envision and design future scenarios of laser propulsion aircraft.

Team Members:
Jea-Woon Cho-Choi (TD2)
J Antonio Aguilar (APD2)
George Paravantes (IxD2)

RESEARCH: One of the first considerations we had was where would this type a technology have the greatest impact on human life?. We began to explore the possibility of time sensitive rescue efforts in urban disaster relief operations.

MAPPING: Based on the idea of urban disaster relief operations we moved forward to research and discover what goes into a disaster relief operation.

MULTI-DISIPLINE: As a group we all considered our backgrounds and moved to leverage our expertise in Transportation, Product and Interaction design to contribute to a final design that is both relevant and addresses various design problems.

HUD DISPLAY: The decision was made very early on that a Head up display solution in the Lightcraft was ideal. The crew had to be fastened in securely and mobility was at a minimum, displaying relevant information like bio suit vital signs along with mapping information was considered essential.

SUIT DESIGN: The bio suits worn by the crew were an important part of the rescue operation because they had to be light weight and able to monitor through various sensors the crews vital signs.

STORYBOARD: Once we had an idea of the scenario we created a rough storyboard to help push the design further and resolve any new issues that might arise.

AMBIENT INFO: On takeoff the crews seat position would be altered so while facing and upright position ambient information would be displayed from the top to help notify lightcraft status during flight.

INFORMATION SLATE: The slate acts as a info management tool for rescue crew members to collect and coordinate droids and assess all data received. The function incorporated are, survivor search tools, gas detection, mapping, droid management, and communication tools.

DROID MANAGEMENT: One of the tools we felt was essential was a way to mange the surveying of a large area through the use of droids to analyze the amount of damage. This gives the operator of the device the ability to cover large amounts of area.

ERICSSON FETCH SERVICE: As GPS becomes more ubiquitous in mobile devices the opportunity to design location based services arises and creates new meaningful ways of connecting people to various contextual environments. This collaborative project was sponsored by Ericsson and challenged us to envision these future services through discoveries made by design ethnography research.

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Design Ethnography Research

CULTURAL PROBES: One of the next steps was to build several cultural probe kits that were given to a range of students throughout the cafe. During the early design stage information gathered from cultural probes can be insightful. The appropriateness of cultural probes is helpful when you need to gather information from users with minimal influence on their actions, or when the process or event takes place over a intermitted or long period of time. The cultural probe kit consisted of three main tasks that had to be completed. First we created cards with open ended sentences resembling social networking status updates, second task was to take pictures with the mood smileys to reflect what feelings they relate to in the picture and indicate places they enjoyed, and where they had good/bad moments in various locations in the cafe on the map. The kit was not a rushed process and it gave the users enough time to answer the questions without felling pressured. Eventually we would get the probes back and start modelling the data.

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Modeling: Making Sense of Your Data

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Personas: Goals and Observed Behaviour Patterns

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Sketch Process: Wire Frames and Concept Development

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Final Design: Intelligent search tools with location based services

INTRO: While owner’s manuals are usually packed with valuable instructions, information and important warnings that you’ve probably never read they do have relevance when you purchase a new vehicle. Retrieving your vehicles information in a more visual non linear fashion can be achieved through a mobile application.

RESEARCH: A source of frustration for any driver is when an engine light turns on. Although a vehicle is still drivable the owner is left in the dark of what the problem might be?. Can we use a mobile device to empower the average driver to initially diagnose the problem and create more convenient ways to connect with service from a vehicle dealership?

ODB2 PORT: Todays vehicles require a specialized scan tool to connect to a standardized On Board Diagnostic’s System to read engine codes. Mobile devices can be leveraged to process and scan for these engine codes and give the user some insight into possible problems and offer various service solutions.

GUIDED SELF-REPAIR: The vehicles on todays market are ever increasing in complexities in the amount of information systems on board. Helping the user determine and locate certain features in their vehicle can be a multi media experience through a mobile device that can help the vehicle owner make small maintenance with minimal confusion and guess work.

OWNERS MANUAL: As we push forward towards paperless documents, we can see evidence with various automotive manufacturers offering more vehicle manuals in a PDF downloadable format. Mobile applications of a owner’s vehicle manual can be used as a marketing tool or a utility tool for car owners to understand and maintain their vehicle.

CONTROL UI: The control panel illustrates a visual representation of the actual dashboard layout. The user has the ability to explore gauges for example when a engine indicator lights up and has the ability to scan and read what the problem might be and offer simple troubleshooting advice.

TECHNICAL SPECS: Offering users a visually narrative way to explore specifications of their vehicle allow drivers understand certain vehicle features and capabilities. I would like to expand out this user interface by layering various vehicle systems and the ability to peel away features to see specific information.

SERVICE AND MAINTENANCE: Mobile devices might be helpful in guiding users in keeping up with various maintenance while enjoying their vehicle purchase. Giving milestone and periodic updates on the condition or various components on the vehicle might help drivers avoid costly repairs down the road.

MULTI-TOUCH: This project was part of an experience prototyping workshop that had us learn about open source options for multi-touch development.
We used a framework called TUIO along with OSCAR a gateway application that lets us develop in Flash AS3. The first step was to explore and discover meaningful ways to develop Multi-touch solutions. I was interested in gaming possibilities and decided to pursue it as a solution. Collaboration around a table surface was also a consideration when designing a multi-touch game.

INITIAL RESEARCH: The idea of table top finger games are nothing new. Sports like Soccer, hockey and football have finger analog versions that have been played by young and old for countless hours of enjoyment. I saw an opportunity for

PAPER PROTOTYPING: When the soccer game concept was decided upon I quickly made some paper prototypes to test game dynamics and some quick usability issues that might arise. Paper prototypes are a fast way to mock up user interfaces with no coding required.

MOBILE PLATFORM: Designing and coding for a mobile platform has it own set of design constraints. Usually the game play experience is personal but can also be collaborative or multi-playing. The screen real estate made the first version of the game a single player option but was good for testing game play and it physics dynamics.

FLASH AS3: Being able to develop the game using Flash AS3 was achieved by using OSC (open sound control) bridge to flash called Oscar which would then communicate with TUIO. This method let me leverage my existing knowledge of AS3 and implement it into a multi-touch gaming experience.

FINAL GAME: The table top multi-touch version required graphic reformatting to a larger resolution size along with porting of various classes to created the table surface version. Here is a final video walkthrough of the process and my final solution.

PROCESSING AND DATA VISUALIZATION : The final week of experience prototyping had us being instructed by Karsten Schmidt. Karsten work is well documented in the london design scene.He shared his design philosophy along with his design pattern approach to object oriented programming. Karsten illustrated techniques on taking raw data and helping us to visualize it in new innovative ways to gain new insights into that information.The later part of the week had us participating in a Fritzing workshop on how to document our hardware sketches and fabricate and route our own circuit boards.

MULTI_TOUCH APPLICATIONS: This week we were introduced to multi-touch platforms. A recent UID graduate student and experience with Multi-touch platforms Ru Zarin demonstrated both hardware aspects and Flash development techniques to create Multi-touch applications. Here is a video diary of the progress and development I went though to build a Flash AS3 Multi-touch application.

MOBILE INTERACTIONS AND PLATFORM SETUPS: This week’s workshop had us looking into using mobile hardware to prototype and test our interactions. We spent the week familiarizing ourselves with how to setup the open source software environment and tap into the iphone and ipod touch’s hardware. The next step was to develop web applications in Apple’s Dashcode using javascript and CSS to control various hardware features of the iPhone. The final deliverable we had was to create a “Future Pet” in two days from concept to working interactive model. The process of how we worked through our “Future Pet” can be seen below in the posted vimeo link.

WORKING WITH PHIDGETS AND ARDUINO: Sketching in hardware is an indispensable tool for designers to articulate a product technology and experience without the need of engineering assistance. It can be an iterative quick process to let designers try new ideas in a fast flexible way, this in turn lets designers explore more scope and dig deeper to discover meaningful behavioural attributes a product should possess. The open source micro-controller(Arduino) along with open source programming languages like Processing have empowered designers with a set of hardware and software coding toolbox to help them envision their products and services.

STOP MOTION ANIMATION: Stop motion as a prototyping tool is an often overlooked method for interaction designers. It’s ability to be used to prototype tangible interfaces can be effective technique that serves as inspiration for the development of novel physical interfaces. Stop motion can also be used to discover the repercussions of technologies that have yet to prevail. Techniques like pixilation give designers the ability to illustrate or animate the body to express a fantastic idea or the expression of an emotion. In summary the use of stop motion animation can be used to produce quick low-fidelity prototypes of tangible interfaces, or can be used to refine a design and present an interaction scenario.

GOAL: The two day workshop was an experiment and exploration into discovering ways to sense or trigger functions on the daisy open source MP3 platform.

DISCOVERIES MADE DURING PROJECT:
- Gestural ideas to control functions.
- Using conductive fabric to stitch in controls.
- Mock up glove with custom wiring harness to
connect stitching to Inputs on the MP3 Player.

MATERIALS USED:
- Conductive threading
- Daisy Open Source MP3 Player
- Arudino Diecimila

INTRODUCTION: The GPS interface project began with a graphics workshop, followed by product analysis and low fidelity prototyping, and continued with a workshop on GUI and Interactive Media. The final outcome was a branded GPS user interface.

GOAL:
Create a new GPS interface
for an existing brand.

GRAPHIC WORKSHOP: The workshops were a series of demonstrations and projects focusing around the aspects of line, weight, dot patterns, negative space and motion. We further went into topics of typography, layout, and finally a stamp design project.

TYPOGRAPHY: This small workshop focused on cropping of typographic elements with emphasis on unique characteristics, followed by typography historical overview. We then moved on to exploring shape dot patterns and their relation to negative space.

STAMP DESIGN: We then built on our previous exercises and applied these new observations by creating a stamp design. We originally used our folded and cut squares to unify their design features into a cohesive overall look. When all four stamps were assembled I used the negative space to tie the individual stamps together.

CRITICAL ANALYSIS: In order to design a new product or service you need to analyze what is currently in the marketplace. We observed what these products do well and where they fail users expectations. We were asked to articulate what features we enjoyed in our mobile phone and what features were a source of frustration. Here is a PDF of my findings on my Nokia 2610.

PRODUCT ANALYSIS: The next item we looked at was the GPS features of the Nokia N810 Internet tablet. In small groups we observed each others tasks with the device and documented what was easy for the user to accomplish and where its shortcomings were.

TASK ANALYSIS: A task analysis breaks down a complex task into its components. To do a task analysis, you usually observe and inquire with an expert and sometimes beginners.

Low Fidelity Prototyping
- Rapid Testing of Interface
- User Observations
- Interviewing Techniques
- Testing/Feedback
- Design Development

Goal: Rapid Testing of Interface Ideas.

Sketch Process
- Ideations
- Bose Design Language
- Hardware Context
- Design Refinements
- Form Sketching

Sketch Process
- Ideations
- Bose Design Language
- Hardware Context
- Design Refinements
- Form Sketching

Sketch Process
- Ideations
- Bose Design Language
- Hardware Context
- Design Refinements
- Form Sketching

Mock-Up Tests
- RE-Design Web Branding Site
- Poster Design (Print)
- Consisted Branding of Device,
Web, and Print

Goal: Create a consistent Branding language between all mediums. Web, and Print.

-Consistent Branding
-Launch Poster AD
-Illustrated Sound Theme
-New Market Category
-The Bose Experience
-Serendipity Interaction
-Personalization

GPS MENU: The menu system was organized into a spring loaded drop down menu to free up more screen space to illustrate more of the mapping area.

MODAL MENU: After a query of search results are listed, the menu slides in and props the user to select the coffee shop that best fits their criteria.

SEARCH TOOL BAR: The search tool was combined with the progress bar to save space and would animate in and out when needed.