Many discussions surrounding the benefits vehicle automation is about everything but human. For instance, commonly cited benefits are:
• Increased energy efficiency
• Reduced congestion
• Possibility of drive-by-wire platform that can accommodate diverse packaging solutions
• Enhanced safety
• Possible on-demand vehicle access system
• Accommodates vehicle sharing system
• Enhanced personal productivity, entertainment, social experience.
In this list of benefits, there still is an important question that needs to be framed. What exactly is the “metrics” by which the value of autonomous drivetrain is evaluated? All the discussions about the efficiency, productivity, safety, and number of people it can transport are unclear as to what aspect of human experience it is attempting to answer. Do aforementioned values constitute what can qualify to be answers to human needs?
Drinking water is absolute necessity to human survival. However, it would be hard pressed to convince someone that drinking water is an exciting activity. For an experience to leave imprinting impact on users, baseline one alone cannot accomplish it. Unless service and products are designed in the package of baseline plus an "X-factor", they will have difficulty building excitement, dependency, and user experiences around it.
Consider Starbucks for instance. At the baseline, the franchise is in the business of providing liquid and food to customers. However it has been so successful at providing additional elements or the “x-factor” that it resonates with something in the user needs that it has built hugely successful business model with products and services that are relatively simple.
Evaluation Metrics
In evaluating Starbuck’s success, Maslow’s hierarchy of needs provides a helpful framework with which design metrics can be imagined. Starbuck’s menu and store space do not constitute the entire range of factors addressed in the pyramid of needs. What Starbucks has addressed, beyond offering superior menu and secure and comfortable location, is the need for people to relate to and belong in, form identity, be empowered, and need for asserting control. It is a packaged experience available through a branded framework that has made Starbucks formidable in its market.
In my opinion, the added values imagined within current discussion surrounding autonomous system run the danger of being so baseline. Without proper metrics for value criteria, vehicle autonomy runs into the risk of becoming another transportation system failure—the public bus system in the US that has largely become associated with stigmas that kept it from expansion toward capturing additional ridership. The Metro bus system as it stands at present sounds proper on the paper, and they sound surprisingly parallel to the ones proposed for the aforementioned autonomous vehicle system:
• Its 40 ft maximum size allows greatest possible number of occupants.
• More buses mean fewer vehicles on the road.
• Bus stops are placed evenly throughout the residential and commercial map grid.
• Some lines are equipped with traffic light overrider to help with travel time efficiency.
• They provide significantly cheaper alternative to vehicle ownership.
• Buses are generally much safer.
• Outsourced driving may enhance personal productivity.
• It provides environment for social interaction.
• The system can complement with varieties of last mile transportation devices.
As good as these may sound, many public transit systems are operating at loss and they are not sustainable. It makes one wonder what the system could have been had it been built it with human centered metrics that addressed people higher internal needs. Autonomous vehicle and system design, therefore, will need to be built with proper metrics in mind—and I’m doubtful that the drivetrain alone won’t satisfy such requirement without added value available through the integration of emerging interface technologies. For autonomous system to find its needed acceptance, it will have to be “autonomous plus x factor”.