A framework for designing interactions between pedestrians and driverless cars: insights from a ride-sharing design study

Abstract

Previous work has highlighted the need for human factors research to not only focus on the passengers inside driverless cars but also consider others who will interact with the car in an urban environment such as pedestrians. In this paper, we position this area of research as a new opportunity for HCI and propose a framework to guide the design of the interactions between driverless cars and pedestrians. The framework draws on HCI literature and our findings from a design study, which focused on designing for the intent and awareness of driverless cars when picking up passengers in a ride-sharing scenario. We designed various interaction design proposals as mockups and tested their acceptance through three rounds of user evaluations. The framework was developed after the second evaluation round and was then applied to revise our design solutions and used in the final evaluation round. The framework offers guidance for breaking down use cases into stages of interactions, specifying the information channels and the interactions between driverless cars and pedestrians, as well as reflecting on how well each solution addresses the user needs.