The Next Experience in Mobility: a UX Manifesto

Mobility is a core part

of our experience in the world.

In 2020, we experienced what life would be like with highly restricted mobility. And most of us didn’t like it. What’s more, the global economy suffered. But the pandemic was just the tip of the iceberg. It’s no secret that if we continue living the way we have for the past 70 years, we will kill this planet—and with it, ourselves.

We are entering a new period where it is crucial for us to do away with old ways of thinking and usher in a new period that reimagines everything we have taken for granted. To that end, this manifesto was written to capture ideas and thoughts I’ve had on mobility and sustainability, stretching back more than a decade. My goal is to inform, entertain, and ideally help spark a conversation that will contribute to us moving towards far more sustainable models of mobility.  

Why the way we do Mobility need to change.

I believe that we are reaching an end of the standardized design process that fuels consumption behaviors that are choking our planet. We need to be much more concerned about environmental impact than ever before. And we can start by extending product lifecycles and avoiding obsolescence.

Mobility remains at the core of our fundamental freedoms and even our simplest, purest pleasures.

Mobility brings us close to each other but also fulfills our need for constant discovery. It allows us to experience new parts of the world and new cultures, to gather in worship or in celebration, to connect with people on a human level.

However, climate change’s consequences will certainly create huge mobility issues. Fixed infrastructure will need to be flexible, even ephemeral to allow transport to take citizens to reach areas with lower population density and avoid big population moves.

How to perform next mobility generation.

This is a list of forward-thinking topics I have kept in the back of my mind over the past decade while working on innovation teams in large market-leading industries (Dassault Systèmes for Digital twin, Orange for connectivity or Pininfarina for Beauty ) and developing hundreds of inspiring projects.

Tomorrow’s mobility system solution must include:

• Modularity as a Design system standard, offering extended product lifecycles perspectives that allow a wider variety of usages, markets and increased efficiency, a sustained high degree of performance, and an artificial intelligence (AI) level using Machine Learning that improves product capabilities.

The more the system is exposed to various environments, situations, and contexts, the more the system’s autonomy can be aimed at accomplishing new tasks in complex environments.

As a start, the system is fully controlled in a controlled environment, (like a storage shed), but then it is guided with “follow me” systems and/or floor sensors that pave the way to new uses in specific situations and contexts, with the system finally gaining autonomy though still in a controlled environment. Over time, these systems can be more opened to public interaction and more changing environments and contexts.

• With growing AI capabilities, a community-focus strategy should shift to a public participation and continuous learning strategy. For this to happen, vehicle controls must be reversed so as not to face anymore a pilot or drive, but a full audience of people who are sharing the same space. The system has been setup first by experts in order to be guided by fundamental rules, but it has to continuously learn from users and avoid cultural bias interpretation.

The more the system is exposed to an increasingly complex environment, the more ambiguity needs to be managed by participative and collective intelligence.

The system UI is managed by external equipment to display live information, to manage people behaviors, and gestures, and to collect live feedback using localized social applications. Here citizens can help the system manage ambiguity in context.

This includes surrounding people with contexts they understand with their own specific culture biases. For example, the QR code displayed on the system can provide people the access to an app that generates an augmented reality environment in order to collect feedback and offer new services.

• Low energy user interfaces like e-ink screen that are self-powered through renewable energy sources (solar, for example) while also managing daily energy consumption based on seasons and available resources. This kind of resilience is the result of a good connection between artificial automated systems and closed natural ecosystems.

• Implementing a DIY strategy with third party developers. Support communities for participative manufacturing balancing available local resources with specific activities that need a level of customization to be compliant to local specifications.

Most of the components should be open-source and refurbished whenever possible. User and community-generated tutorial content will be encouraged and promoted to help ideas and new applications be developed and flourish.

• Voice interfaces have shown their limit, and the use of human sophisticated language as an output creates physiological biases that are frequently rejected by the public. Natural language processing and gestures are great as a command inputs, but we should limit the level of output through expressive sound design and kinetic capabilities in order to create a good relationship with and acceptance of machines.

Character designers can build a library of appropriately expressed personalities of the next generation of human-centered responsive systems.

• The object should be part of a global system of IoT products. Street and building signage should be included on the object using dynamic projection. The UX rules will be reversed from what they are today: The pedestrian will not behave according to mobility constrains but mobility systems will adapt and respect pedestrian habits.

Projection mapping on the floor will indicate to pedestrians the machine’s intentions, giving them a sense of confidence and safety. Computing, data storage, data capture and connectivity will be collectively managed by groups of devices in a dedicated area in order to perform efficiently and in a united manner (systems solidarity).

 What kind of solution could be compliant to today’s challenge.

A 20-year design planning process across various industries and markets enabled by active communities that are engaged in the system engineering process and supported by local fablabs and open AI platforms.

To conclude, It doesn’t end with mobility, but mobility is the tip of the spear. Tomorrow’s smart homes will learn from public transportation and goods logistics systems developed in the near future. They will benefit from the experiences and uses of other systems, enabling improvement and transition to the next market while achieving sustainable the climate change solutions.

If you want to be part of this vision and contribute, you are welcome. We will bring together this project to the level of working prototypes and be pioneer of next mobility.

Thank you L2Concept for the support, more coming soon ;)