Deriving UX Dimensions for Future Autonomous Taxi Interface Design

Hallewell, Madeline; Large, David; Harvey, Catherine; Briars, Leah; Evans, Jenna; Coffey, Madelaine; Burnett, Gary

Abstract

Advances in autonomous vehicle (AV) technologies mean that driverless taxis could become a part of everyday life in cities within the next decade. We present a user-design activity leading to the development of an experience-design framework for autonomous taxi services of the future based on end-user expectations.
We used Mozilla Hubs as a design collaboration tool to inform Human-Machine-Interface (HMI) design for future autonomous taxis. Twenty-five participants joined researcher facilitators in seven group workshops utilising virtual reality (VR) environments. These environments depicted a roadside scene enabling discussion of approach, identification, and onboarding tasks; and a taxi interior immersed within a 360° video for discussing in-transit, arrival, and exit/payment interactions. Verbal prompts encouraged participants to envision and discuss HMIs, which they subsequently created within the virtual environment using 3D models from an online repository and/or the integrated “draw” function.
Analysis identified twelve dimensions of autonomous taxi user experience which provide a preliminary framework for experience design. Dimensions present semantic anchors to describe a continuum of experiences, for example “functional” vs “sociable” and “conventional” vs “futuristic”.
To demonstrate their use, four autonomous taxi HMI concepts were developed, and interactions with these were video recorded using 360° video to create materials for a VR “Wizard-of-Oz” evaluation study. 53 participants watched the videos on VR headsets or on PCs and evaluated the experiences using the dimensions. Significant differences were found between the experiences on most dimensions, suggesting that participants were able to use the dimensions as a meaningful framework for evaluating an HMI interaction.
Keywords
Autonomous Taxis, HMI design, user experience (UX) design, AV MaaS, Virtual Reality

Citation

Hallewell, M., Large, D., Harvey, C., Briars, L., Evans, J., Coffey, M., & Burnett, G. (2022). Deriving UX Dimensions for Future Autonomous Taxi Interface Design. Journal of Usability Studies, 17(4), 140-163

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Feb 21, 2022
• Publication Date: 2022-08
• Deposit Date: Apr 8, 2022
• Publicly Available Date: Aug 31, 2022
• Journal: Journal of Usability Studies
• Electronic ISSN: 1931-3357
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 17
• Issue: 4
• Pages: 140-163
• Public URL: https://nottingham-repository.worktribe.com/output/7713144
• Publisher URL: https://uxpajournal.org/ux-future-autonomous-taxi-interface-design/