Project Name— Pickup truck tow assist system & autonomous self-park mode
Type— Research, HMI
Role— Design Researcher, Project Manager
About this project
Over the course of 6 days in July of 2022, a major automotive maker hired my firm, Escalent, to conduct research related to a self-park mode and an augmented trailer detection and guidance system. The engineers themselves conducted the trailer assist interviewing while we conducted user research around the competitors self-park mode. In this project, I had to wear multiple hats balancing a PM role and moderating research around the self-park system. Following the research, we generated a report with our findings and a list of recommendations for the client to start the design process for their self-park system prototype as well as list of revisions we recommended for the client’s next iteration of the tow assist system.
Deliverables
Final report with key statistical metrics and findings, recommendations for design, sketches of participant co-design during semi-structured interviews.
Process
During this project, my key role was to serve as moderator and interviewer during monad interviews. This included a feature introduction to the self park mode on the competitors vehicle, as well as a semi-structured interview as we went. The data collection consisted of open-ended and multiple choice questions, allowing us to conduct both qualitative insight generation as well as statistical analysis. Overall, our qualitative and quantitative findings were consistent, leading to some really interesting triangulation on potential uses for an autonomous park system beyond current use cases.
Workshop 1: Instructive guide demonstration and semi-structured interview
We began by giving an overview of the self-park system. We gave some broad insights into what the current technical shortcomings were to bypass unproductive feedback on lack of responsiveness of current prototype. Tasks included: Remote pickup, drop off and park, parking structure parking attempt, and send to auxiliary location for pickup. Participants worked through roughly 1 hour worth of experiences and interview questioning before concluding in a 15 minute wrap up exercise to synthesize overall thoughts on the system.
