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
UX Research
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.
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Liberty enhances the vision of the elderly and does not frustrate them with the degradation of their senses.
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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".
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Liberty adapts to the environment to give seniors the best visibility in any situation.
How can we design for sensory degeneration in the elderly to reduce the negative impact on driving?
00 RESEARCH OBJECTIVE
DESIGN RECOMMENDATION
Liberty is an assisted driving UI specially designed for seniors on the HUD, enabling them to drive confidently in any environment.
New
Simulated Screen
Old
01 RESEARCH
02 IDEATION
• Why HUD?
• Redesign Goals
03 RECOMMEND
04 TAKE OUT
• Background & Challenges
• Defining Seniors Needs
• UI Redesign
• Adaptive Design
• User Research on Senior Citizens
• Next step, I hope I can ……
01 RESEARCH
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.
🦻👀 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.
Insight
Background & Challenges
Defining Seniors Needs
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?
📈 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.
👊 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.
Age Group 55-71
03 User Interviews
34 Online Survey
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.
67 yrs old he / him
“I don't want to be discriminated against while driving because of my age.”
Jason Lin
Persona
🧐 Job
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
Rebuild confidence on the road.
Ability to cope with various situations (e.g. Night or Rain).
01 ⛅ Responsive
02 👓 Compensate
• Enhance the visual senses of elderly drivers.
03 ⛳ Optimize
• Design the most recognizable UI Kit.
• Design adaptive interfaces for various situations.
Concept
02 IDEATION
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.
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.
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.
How to switch modes?
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.
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.
Color & Typography :
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.
Icon :
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.
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.
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.
Redesign Goals
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.
Why HUD?
03 RECOMMEND
UI Redesign
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.
Adaptive Design
• 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.
• 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.