Week 5 & 6: CoDesign sessions and results.
This week I managed to interview two people plus another person that decided to participate. At first it was only two men that agreed to participate in this session I had prepared but I was also interested in interviewing a woman to observe if there was any difference in the way visually impaired people experienced their mobility based on gender. Luckily, one of the two participants that had already signed up for my session put me in touch with a blind woman. With this, I had 3 total participants: two retired men and one retired woman.
In an ideal context, I would have managed to interview more people with a more diverse background: socioeconomic, race and gender. However, time was running and no one else had offered to participate at this stage.
My interest in at least having a woman in my CoDesign session was to explore how the matrix of domination affected a visually impaired woman with their mobility. This particular participant was sensitive to be affected by two of the modes of oppression described by Sasha Constanza Chock: capitalism and heteropatriarchy.
To organise the answers I obtained, I categorised them with the following labels:
By doing this, it would make it easier for me to analyse how mobility factors could influence the AV experience and vice-versa. Furthermore, by differentiating the interaction points it would make it clearer for me to see how these point could be tackled in the AV experience to be inclusive towards visually impaired people.
What carrying out these sessions made me see is that as user experience designer, letting people tell you about their experiences constitutes a fruitful and rich experience. By crafting a session where people could express their thoughts freely I did not only got answers to my questions but I also got many more questions to make that I hadn’t thought of before. This helped me broaden my perspective of my own project while also expanding my understanding about the world that surrounds me and the people in it.
Following there’s the outcome of the CoDesign sessions I had carried out. This outcome is also structured under the same aforementioned categories. When comparing the men’s concerns when using a cab to the woman’s, there was a difference. While men’s main concern was not to get overcharged for their trips, the woman had concerns related to safety.
From a designer’s perspective it seems that even though most of the outcome is focused on improving the experience of using AVs transport services for visually impaired people, the features that steam from these CoDesign sessions could also benefit those who are not visually impaired. On another hand, it doesn’t seem that AVs transportation services will get rid of human workforce; having this available at some points of the experience can only enhance it.
Finally, the reliance on audio interaction would not shift from today’s cabs experience to the AVs one. Audio interaction needs to be available and tailored for visually impaired people if AVs want to be an inclusive force for their mobility.
Bibliography
Costanza-Chock, S. and Philip, N., 2018. Design Justice, A.I. And Escape From The Matrix Of Domination.