Designing the future of urban mobility with Byton

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Case study content

Byton were a modern self driving and mobility start-up headquartered in Nanjing and with offices in Munich and San Jose. After the successful showing of the M-BYTE concept at CES, BYTON established an advanced UX and design unit in Los Angeles. I joined the team to help redefine mobility in near and future urban spaces.

We began by focusing on two ideas; how will the urban professional move in the city in five years, and what will urban mobility really mean in 30 years. Our mission, focusing on the first concept - design CES ready prototypes. 

Approach

Working closely with designers and engineers from BMW and Mercedes, I advocated early for a Human Centered Design approach. First, by modeling and understanding professional's in urban contexts, as well as the needs of their stakeholders. In addition to this, I developed a view of the future urban landscape to help us design to the real needs of the context.

Service Blueprints, ethnographic research and workshops were all used in building the future vision. Extending on notions of 'the third place' we identified two products; a new rideshare concept as well as autonomous self organizing living spaces.

Our rideshare concept used dual view screens, eye tracking gestural control of the UI as well as haptics in the seats of passengers to augment their experiences. I led the design or the eye tracking systems, leveraged in a single dual view display behind the driver's seat. These features were a few intended to allow passengers to share autonomous or manned ride share experiences that are personalised, anticipatory and private.

Results

This animation shows the final eye tracking animation concept our team created.

We built everything in a combination of foam models and VR. We were then able to generate a number of patents for Byton. Moreover, the Service Design work I had done was used as materials for talks with various organisations including Amazon Auto and Blacklane, generating significant interest for the business.

Activities

  • Ethnographic research
  • Landscape research
  • Workshops
  • Persona development
  • Experience maps
  • Service blueprints
  • Financial and business forecasting
  • Business strategy
  • Interaction design
  • Prototyping
  • Project management

Work samples

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