Publication

When youths travel in cars, they are not just sitting still and looking straight forward. Cars are today designed and constructed based on the needs from a wide range of users, and previously there has not been a project exploring the needs and activities of youths explicitly. The purpose of this Master’s Thesis Project is to investigate how youths between the ages of 10-17 years behave in cars and what activities they do. And by doing so, understand how this affects their experience, comfort and safety. The aim is fulfilled by the research of four main areas. Firstly, a methodology for the user studies of the target group is developed and evaluated. Secondly, the needs of youths are explored and mapped through the implementation of the methods. Thirdly, what activities this target group performs and would like to perform when travelling in cars, and how the activities affect the youths’ sitting postures and safety in the car is studied. Fourth and last, a design concept, intended to increase safety and enhance the user experience, is proposed. The result is also divided into the four main areas, presented below. The methods developed and used in the study are Parent Interviews, Instagram Diaries and Family Home Sessions. The evaluation of the methods and the number of insights they generated, indicates high suitability for the target group and the aim of the study. The result of the mapping of the needs is communicated and prioritised through an Impact Map including the seven Behavioural Archetypes ‘The Fun Seeker’, ‘The Solo Rider’, ‘The Social Butterfly’, ‘The Time Killer’, ‘The Set-Upper’, ‘The Pilot’, and ‘The Harmony Seeker’. The analysis of the sitting postures results in the finding of critical and desirable sitting postures for different activities. Some of the most critical activities found are: different types of phone activities, talking to a person in the front, sleeping, watching a movie together in the back seat, and looking at a phone showed by another person in the car. The result of the design concept development is a back-seat entertainment system, including an adjustable touch screen, a safe wireless phone charging place, a suggestion for the content of the interface, and enabling using a phone as a control. The design concept is likely to fulfil the highest-ranked needs of the behavioural archetypes. Evaluations indicate that the design concept improves most of the critical sitting postures, and thereby also the safety of the target group. Lastly, areas of further development for the methods and the design concept are suggested. The three most important recommendations are to perform conventional user study methods and compare them to the methods developed in this project, perform a sitting posture study with participants from the target group for the found activities, and validate the concept with users in the actual context, both regarding user experience and safety.