Car Design Problem

This research project aims at determining what the key factors and pain points are for car motorists who experience stress when commuting on a daily bases, and creating a design solution to potentially reduce stress levels. Firstly to understand the design problem, it must be approached from a HCD, UXD and XD perspective to create a solution. The principles and methods of HCD and UXD will be applied to finding the solution with XD supporting any methods that have been overlooked because of the close similarities these practices share.

Prior to doing any form of research on the design problem of stress experienced by car owners who travel on a daily basis the first step was to create a Firma model as a framework of reference.

The Firma model

The data is then analysed and combined as to form a more complex product for the solution.

EMPATHISE:

The first phase to this research project was to gather information from desktop researches, to see what creates stress when commuting on a daily basis. Through this research I found most of the information discovered focused on users who travel to work in the mornings and afternoons after work. This helped one narrow down the particular users one wanted to interview, being students with their own cars and people who need their cars to get to work or use vehicles for work.

Through all the information gathered from the desktop research, I narrowed down and listed the most general occurring problems to why users experience stress when traveling on a daily basis:

1. Space: Roads lack the capacity to provide enough space for the growing number of car users. Users feel restricted by narrow roads and the feeling of minimum options, forces aggressiveness which causes fear, stress and anxiety. This is also a major factor to causing traffic

Danger: Being put in danger by other drivers especially in regards to other drivers being impatient and aggressive. There are also the dangers of damaging vehicles especially for users that don’t have insurance. The negative emotions caused by other drivers are impacts on psychological stress which causes fear, resentment, rage and helplessness.

3. Communication: Lack of clear communication in terms of other drivers signalling. No universal signalling which can confuse other drivers. This also contributes to the dangers of being on the roads and how unpredictable drivers can be.

4. Training: The fear of other drivers being untrained in perception and emotional skills which effect abilities to be co-operative. This is a major cause to accidents in where users fail to pick up on the correct cues in a problematic situation. This is an underlining factor because drivers tend to panic because of the stress of not knowing how to deal with such situations.

5. Traffic congestion: Forced to drive in traffic, effecting time management. This is considered a major factor because traffic can even affect work related