00 Overview
Problem &
Design Questions
"Is your puppy okay today?"
There is no way to keep our pet's health, check their condition, and get essential information about pet for people who raise pet first time or who are too busy to check their pet during work time.
Universal Design, Accessibility, AV
| Design Thesis, MDes 2021
Building Universal Principles
to enhance accessibility to AV-taxis for people with disabilities
Universal Access
to AV-taxis
Team
Duration
Solo Project
Design Thesis @UW, MDes 2021
Sept 2020 - June 2021 (9 months)
00 Overview
Challenge &
Design Question
How can AV-taxis, the future of individual mobility, bring benefits to people with disabilities as solo-mobility?
Design Solution
Universal Access Principles
to increase accessibility of new AV-taxis and self-driving cars
Key Learnings
Two layers consist of the journey of AV-taxis must be considered for access to self-driving taxis. Inside and outside of AV-taxis (Physical) and mobile phone applications (Digital)
Three human senses (Tactile, auditory, and visual) are the main senses used in human-machine interactions and must be covered throughout the journey.
Solo mobility of people with disabilities makes enormous social, cultural, and economic differences in a person's life.
01 Preview
Design the accessible robot taxis and guidelines for that
Final Solution
How to use
Less Word,
Bigger Impact
Loosely woven principles with four keywords give space applicable to all robot taxis that will emerge in various forms in the future.
Guidelines being composed of sentences reinforce principles and provide detailed application points.
Finally, design examples give users a clear understanding of design principles and present practical applications.

A picture is worth a thousand words
Design Example


Automatic folding seat
to give enough space for motorized wheelchairs or guide dogs

Both-side door opening
& powered- handrail
to support passengers get into the taxi
Three Disabilities &
Three Interfaces
Target Users
Universal Access Principles cover three missing human senses: touch, sight, and hearing.
The three senses above are the three most painful senses for humans when finding a way and using mobile devices. Moreover, each sense connects to three interfaces: display/text, voice assistant, and tactile information.

Digital & Physical
Covered Touchpoints

AV taxis' internal and external physical environment should be considered during a robot taxi journey, but the digital touchpoint to call a taxi should also be covered.
Each principle applies slightly differently with two unique touchpoints (digital and physical), and the universal access principle shows it.
02 Research Methods
100+
Literature Research
3
Rounds of First person User Journey
7
End-user Interview
5
Rounds of Concept Testing/ Co-design

01 Paper Research
Picking draft Principles from existing paper & design research


02 First-person Experience
Figuring out Painpoints and essential two layers of touchpoints

03 Interview End-users
Ideation with hand drawings


End-user Interview & Co-design
04 High-fidelity Visualization
Overcome Challenges- Validate Principles

03 Reflection
01. How to get credible data
"Learning-from-failure framework"
-
No face-to-face experiments or interviews due to Covid 19
-
No end users and hard to find users to interview because it's a future technology
To overcome the above obstacles, I tried to start interviews using realistic and high-quality rendering examples so that passengers without direct experience could provide sharp and critical feedback. High-fidelity images convey the experience of taking a robot taxi even they've never tried before. Their crucial feedback about the design example helps to solidify design principles.
02. How to convey the concept easily : Golden Path User Journey Video

03 Next Steps
01. Towards the spectrum of disabilities
How can passengers with a complex and broad spectrum of disabilities use robot taxis rather than one disability?

02. Open a window to hear criticism
Opens a window where you can easily download the principles and enter feedback so that the Universal Access Principle continues to prove itself.
