UX CASE STUDY
Smart Pilot
A case that studied 7750 drivers involved in car accidents concluded that 67.4% of the drivers studied had at least one pre existing disorder and 70% of them were found culpable by the court. Of the drivers who had a pre-existing disorder, over 50% of those disorders were respiratory, circulatory, and endocrine diseases. What if there was a way we could track a driver's vitals and ensure safety?
In order to challenge those statistics, UX design and Industrial Design students collaborated to formulate a potential design solution for this problem. This project involved research, user interviews, wireframes, visual mocks, prototypes (Adobe Xd, Photoshop, Premiere Pro), and a finalized mock-up, completed in the span of 5 weeks. This case study documents the process of the 5 week project period that we underwent.
UX Students: Saif Elmaghraby, Mert Demirhan, Inderjeet Singh
ID Students: Connor Wright, Michael Kowalik
THE CHALLENGE
The Challenge: Design a solution for vehicular accidents that occur as a result of cardiovascular/dehydration disease by incorporating a digital display and a supplementary mobile application.
In order to start our research and design process, we needed a timeline to keep ourselves organized. By narrowing it down to 5 different design sections, we were able to structure it as follows:
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The Inspiration phase: Research and understand the challenge
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The Synthesis Phase: State our observations and define the problem and why it's important.
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The Ideation Phase: Brainstorm as many ideas and solutions as possible.
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The Prototyping Phase: Build real tactile representations of our best ideas.
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The Testing Phase: Test our potential solutions to see what works best.
THE SOLUTION
WEEK 1: INSPIRATION PHASE
To start off our project, we needed to understand more about what we were trying to solve. That meant researching several different trends that would affect the success of our design. We then decided to use a Method Kit to start brainstorming potential solutions to the problem. With that in mind we wanted to filter out our ideas to three main themes of consideration:
1. Consumer: What design solution would a consumer be comfortable with?
2. Societal: Do we anticipate this design solution to fit in with today's societal trends?
3. Technological: Are the design solutions we propose feasible with our current technological advancements?
WEEK 2: SYNTHESIS PHASE
After researching and understanding the problem at hand, we wanted to combine our observations and make sense out of it. How do we design solution that would significantly decrease the amount of vehicular accidents that occur as a result of cardiovascular/dehydration disease?
With a whole lot of potential solution ideas, our team needed to settle on solutions that seemed viable, desirable, and feasible. Our next group meeting consisted of us explaining how each one of our ideas could be used in a consumer, societal, and technological perspective. Each group member had several ideas and pictures to support their claims, but through feedback from outer group members, we were able to reach a final concept idea.:
A steering wheel that measured your saline levels as well as your heart rate, was our focus now. We knew that this technology already existed, but has never been used in steering wheel technology. With that in mind, we decided to divide up research amongst the group members, to be able to understand what type of input information we can receive through:
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Saline levels.
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Cardiovascular function.
WEEK 3: IDEATION PHASE
After diverging with our ideas, now was the time to converge. Our findings about what information we could get by measuring saline levels and cardiovascular functions was used to guide our design thinking. At the third meeting, we split into two groups. We used this as an opportunity to work on what we knew best. Industrial Design students worked on the steering wheel concept look. While us, UX Design students, worked on the car digital display and the type of output the car would give as a result of the input. The aim of this phase was to incorporate our ideas into a tangible concept that we can then have a look at and add new features. New ideas were noted and discussed with the rest of the group.
After taking some time to discuss our ideas and how they can be applied to our design. We voted on ideas that were worthy of making it to the next step of the design sprint. These ideas were to be combined to form our final design. We also saw an opportunity for an additional supplementary mobile application that could further support our solution.
*Design concepts are evolving from left to right as we progress through the weeks and feedback is provided.
WEEK 4: IDEATION PHASE
After the third meeting, each group member was asked to go home and research ways they could build upon our final prototype. This meeting was designed specifically for the prototyping phase. We divided our work equally into 2 groups.
1st group: Digital display, application design, and dashboard display.
2nd group: Visual steering wheel concept, combine our UI into the final concept idea.
Displayed below are our final designs.
