Autonomous Bus Passenger Experience

Abstract: Time keeps on changing our perception of what is possible in our personal life and around us. Over time, jobs such as elevator operator was essential to make the elevator keep its speed, stop parallel to the floor and keep passengers safe in case of emergency. Nowadays elevator passengers just have to enter their destination and wait to be transported there. An operator would be superfluous for this, today, simple procedure. This paper aims to create a set of interaction strategies to provide an efficient and pleasurable journey for the passenger traveling with an autonomous bus, as well as evaluate concepts where these strategies have been applied. The strategies and concepts will be developed from an extensive user- and literature research where the situation of today will be analysed and looked upon with the eyes of tomorrow, to find challenges and needs. Findings shows that passengers have to trust the vehicle and service. At the same time vehicle and service providers have to provide a reliable and consistent service. Four design directions were created to establish this trust between the user and vehicle and service. To enable control and give passengers an efficient journey, passengers have to be provided with adequate and reliable information. The information regarding the bus’s behaviour should be communicated in a transparent way so the bus’s intentions and actions are understandable from a passenger point of view. Also, passengers have to be enabled to stay safe when using the bus, during commuting and emergency, through giving them cues in how an emergency should be handled.