The increasing usage of ride-sharing and autonomous vehicles has presented a need for personalized mobility experiences. This research defines these needs through an investigation from passengers who have used or will use these services. User-behaviors and user pain-points were categorized through in-depth interviews and observations. The most pressing categories were defined to be safety, privacy, and comfort. The variety of responses and user pain points defined a need for a flexible solution that employ a safe, private, and comfortable experience during a shared ride. We present a human-centered design solution that segments the shared space and provides a sense of security through personal physical space, privacy through asymmetrical viewing of neighboring passengers, and comfort through increasing the field of view of the passenger.@en

As more digital devices with sensing capabilities are introduced into users’ daily lives, the risks of threats to data and privacy and security have increased. While cybersecurity has been acknowledged as an important concern in developing products with digital services, currently available design methodologies and practices offer limited effective guidance to designers to explicitly address cybersecurity issues. In this paper, we present a case study from a product design course at the University of California, Berkeley, where the course’s teaching team implemented an intervention in the form of cybersecurity- focused educational materials into the design process. The baseline and post-intervention survey results indicate that the cybersecurity intervention throughout the course had positively influenced the students’ awareness of cybersecurity (p<0.001, SD=0.79, 26% increase in score, Cohen’s d=0.81). The intervention provoked the designers to consider and include aspects of cybersecurity in developing their design solutions throughout most of the design process. However, their increased awareness aside, the extent of the student teams considering cybersecurity had tapered off over the 6-week design course with little noticeable influence in the final design.@en

What sustainable design practices can also drive innovation, and what practices do people value? Previous analysis of sustainable design methods, and the opportunism of designers generally, has suggested that design methods should actually be examined at the level of their component activities and mindsets, as each of these provides different advantages that designers could mix and match. This study performed workshops of three sustainable design methods for a total of 327 students, then surveyed students about which activities or mindsets within each design method drove innovation value, sustainability value, and any other value. The design methods tested were The Natural Step, Whole
System Mapping, and Biomimicry. Qualitative and quantitative analyses of surveys found that some activities and mindsets were valued more than others for sustainability, innovation, or both, and to some extent revealed why. Some results were surprising and suggest new research directions.@en