Liberty
Assisting elderly drivers by redesigning the UI of the HUD
This UI can be applied to any HUD, but this project uses TOYOTA's HUD as an example.
CONTEXT
TEAM
ROLE
TOOLS
OVERVIEW
Personal Project
UI Redesign ( Inclusive design )
2 Month
Wei-Hsiang Lo
Advised by Professors
Terry Ko
Literature Research
User Research
Concept Development
Prototyping
User-Center Design
Figma
FigJam
Adobe Illustrator
Adobe Photoshop
Adobe After Effects
Keyshot
Taiwan's aging rate is the fastest in the world. This was not a problem in the past, but car accidents due to "human error" of the elderly are also increasing year by year, which leads to the question of "Should the elderly continue to drive?".
As part of my undergraduate thesis, I designed Liberty for seniors, a UI that assists them in driving on a HUD, so that seniors will not lose the right and ability to drive autonomously as their senses deteriorate due to age.
Minimizing the negative impact of degradation on older drivers can help rebuild their confidence and reduce public prejudice about their age.
DESIGN
OBJECTIVE
💪 Regain driving confidence for the elderly
Liberty enhances the vision of the elderly and does not frustrate them with the degradation of their senses.
Responsive, Optimize, and Compensate
😰 Reduce social age discrimination against senior drivers
Liberty has improved response times for the elderly to be comparable to those of younger drivers, reducing the incidence of crashes caused by "human error".
🧐 Ensure visibility in any situation
Liberty adapts to the environment to give seniors the best visibility in any situation.
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PROBLEM
STATEMENT
How can we design for sensory degeneration in the elderly to reduce the negative impact on driving?
DESIGN
SOLUTION
Liberty is an assisted driving UI specially designed for seniors on the HUD, enabling them to drive confidently in any environment.
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Elderly HUD UI
01
Understanding Background
02
Exploratory Research
03
Concept
Development
04
Designing
Liberty
THE
PROCESS
What’s the Problem?
Why did it cause this problem, and why have we never been able to solve it?
Design Principle
Where Should We Start?
Define UI Kit
HUD GUI Overview
Defining Seniors Needs
Job, Pain, and Gain
Why Choose Heads-Up Displays Redesign?
Design Goals
According to the Taiwan Police Department 2021, the rate of traffic accidents caused by "human error" is directly proportional to the increase in age. The accident rate of drivers over 70 years old is much higher than that of other age groups, and the accident rate of the elderly also increased year by year.
BACKGROUND & CHALLENGES
What’s the Problem?
01 Understanding Background
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📈 Taiwan's aging society is the fastest in the world
Taiwan will enter a super-aged society ( 20% ) in 5 years ( 2025 ), which means that the number of elderly drivers will only increase in the future.
🦻👀 Aging and degeneration of sensory and cognitive functions
Older adults, while gaining more driving experience as they age, face age-related deterioration, which directly contributes to high accident rates.
👊 Driving is a “Right”
We can't stop seniors from driving, driving is still vital to most seniors' lives, and losing the right to drive is seen as a disaster that has a huge negative psychological impact on them.
Resources: Taiwan Police Administration， Taipei City Government Police Department Traffic Police Brigade
Why did it cause this problem and why have we been unable to solve it?
The age-specific accident rate of road traffic accidents in 2021
The accident rate of male elderly in road traffic accidents in Taipei City
While secondary research has given us some insight, I still need more rigorous user research to understand what seniors really need from driving and to help us identify design opportunities.
My investigation focused on the following questions:
1. Do you think driving is a necessary behavior?
2. Do you think driving behavior has a chance to be replaced?
3. Have you ever felt the effects of aging on driving?
4. Can you elaborate on these effects?
USER
INTERVIEWS
Defining Seniors Needs
Job
02 Exploratory Research
No more negative mentality and impact on driving due to aging and degradation.
Pain
The psychological impact of being labeled because of age.
Slow response time due to narrowed visual field and reduced sensitivity to light.
Gain
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Rebuild confidence on the road.
Ability to cope with various situations (e.g. Night or Rain).
Jason Lin
67 yrs old he / him
To better guide design and generate empathy for users, I synthesized literature research and user research to come up with the following map of Persona and value proposition.
Job, Pain, and Gain
03
User
Interviews
34
Online Survey
55-71
Age
Group
User insights based on the value proposition map
“I don't want to be discriminated against while driving because of my age.”
Here are the four solutions I conceived by reviewing the primary and secondary research. I drew the four possible solutions into a 2x2 matrix to find the MVP. By analyzing the pros and cons, we can know that a UI for the elderly for the HUD is the most valuable and least expensive.
Design Opportunities
Opportunity matrix
Surveys related to improving the visual abilities of the elderly require a significant amount of user data and time. Due to time constraints, I turned to people who had done surveys to understand the content to assist me in future design decisions.
Why Choose Heads-Up Displays Redesign?
Based on the needs of the elderly and the characteristics of HUD, I summarized the main needs of the users and what I wanted to achieve through the design on the HUD UI.
The content of these papers guided us in the design of the HUD and helped us understand how to optimize the HUD UI for elderly drivers.
Design Goals
In the way humans perceive information, the proportions of obtaining external information through vision, hearing, touch, smell, and taste are 83%, 11%, 3.5%, 1.5%, and 1% respectively, so vision is an important sense in the driving process.
I want to find a platform to show my UI redesign. Toyota's HUD is the best because Toyota has a 31.6% market share in Taiwan in 2020 and it is also very popular with the elderly.
TOYOTA’s HUD
HUD UI Platform
This UI can be applied to any brand of HUD.
This project takes TOYOTA’s HUD as an example for now.
IDEATION
03 Concept Development
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⛅ Responsive
My design was guided by three key principles: Adopting responsive design to handle the various situations that may be faced while driving, applying the most appropriate UI suite for the elderly, and finally integrating these into the HUD UI to compensate for the degradation of the elderly senses.
Design adaptive interfaces for various situations.
A review of user interviews and pain points indicated that the degraded senses of the elderly were unable to adapt to the changing weather.
A responsive UI needed to be designed.
👓 Compensate
Enhance the visual senses of elderly drivers.
⛳ Optimize
Design Principles
Design the most recognizable UI Kit.
Where Should We Start?
1. Which UI Elements Need to be Changed?
I reviewed what I learned from user interviews and literature. The following parts are the UI elements that we need to redesign. We needed to find the combination that would produce the best results for elderly drivers.
ELEMENT - 1
Navigation Font
ELEMENT - 2
Number Font
ELEMENT - 3
Navigation ICON
ELEMENT - 4
Background color
3. How to switch modes?
2. How many modes do we need to design?
After investigation, we found that seniors experience the following five situations that cause different negative effects when driving.
Toyota HUD sample
Here are my two options :
But both solutions had major drawbacks, and then I started asking myself if there was a way to combine the advantages of these two solutions.
The car's detection of outdoor temperature and UV light allows the UI to be changed for different weather or time of day. This solution solves the problem of options a and b.
Mainly through literature and user testing, I defined the UI Kit that is suitable for the elderly in each mode, paying special attention to the comprehensive comparison of driving background and HUD colors and fonts.
In addition, because the focus speed is no longer sensitive and the sense of distance is diminished, perspective or 3D-like icons are not appropriate when designing for seniors. Although it is trendy, it will increase their visual burden.
DEFINING
Define UI Kit
04 Designing Liberty
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Icon :
Color & Typography :
I have designed a special version of the UI for seniors. Adding the background color also highlights the whole interface. Also, I flattened the icons to account for possible out-of-focus issues with the perspective icons.
DESIGNING
INTERFACE
HUD GUI Overview
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User Research on Senior Citizens
This was the first time I conducted user research on the elderly group, as they do not use social software very often, which made it difficult for me to distribute the questionnaire. In addition, the user interviews were difficult because there was a large age gap, so the wording used in the interviews needed careful consideration.
If I still had time, I would enhance my user research and make my findings more detailed.
Reflection
Next step, I hope I can ……
Due to the project time and our strict regulations on covid-19, it is difficult to invite seniors for user testing to verify the design, so in the future, I hope to conduct user testing and iterate the design.