Steerra

Details

Timeline

January 2024 - March 2024

Role

UX Designer working with 2 other designers

Responsibility

I conducted research, ideated, created flows, and designed screens for the final product.

Problem

How can we create a semi-autonomous scooter that will bring value to the market that:

  1. doesn't exist with other forms of transportation

  2. retains & builds on the value that current scooters provide

Solution

Prioritize safety by providing as much status information as possible during autonomous driving

Provide instantaneous manual takeover

Communicate intention to other vehicles without sacrificing safety

Change the form factor of a traditional scooter without sacrificing compactness and convenience

Research

Conducting guerrilla research with 9 current scooter users, we sought to discover why people preferred to use their scooters over other modes or transportation.

Convenience. Scooters are popular for quick commutes, especially among students. They’re easy to start and park.

Portability. Scooters are quite easy to transport and store.

Effortless. Riding a scooter is not physically exhausting.

Safety is a huge concern

Interviews revealed major safety concerns, highlighting the need to prioritize rider trust and confidence—especially when designing an autonomous driving feature.

Safety

Riders felt unsafe in traffic, often squeezed between cars. Though electric scooters restricted to roads, many ride on sidewalks to avoid danger.


Lack of road communication

Electric scooters lack safe ways to communicate with cars —hand signals require releasing a handlebar, reducing stability and safety.

Trust is everything

One very eye-opening and insightful question we asked helped lead our design for our semi-autonomous driving system.

Riders don't trust autonomous driving systems. A lack of control is a contributing factor.

With safety, and more specifically trust as our top priority, we focused on designing a semi-autonomous scooter while preserving the value of manual riding.

How might we…

develop a semi-autonomous scooter system that fosters rider trust, enables on-road communication, and preserves the core benefits of scooters?

What even is a scooter?

We wanted to take a step back and look at what a scooter is defined as.


Since traditional scooters require two hands for balance, using a screen compromises stability. We addressed this by redesigning the scooter with a seat and steering wheel.

Unfolded

Folded

Screen Flow

With a screen in the steering wheel, we prioritized key displays: manual mode limits riders to default screens for focus, while automatic mode allows swiping through more information to build trust - especially the Automatic Driving Visualization to see what the scooter sees.

Automatic Driving Displays

Manual Driving Displays

Improvements

Following our ideation of what our scooter could look like and the decision flow, we designed our screens to determine what could be improved:

Automatic Driving Visualization

Riders wanted to immediately see info on what the system visualized when automatically driving in order to trust it and make themselves feel more safe.

Before

After

Countdown for System Manual Handoff

Originally, system handoffs (scooter prompts switch from automatic driving to manual) were immediate, but riders needed time to prepare. We added a countdown to ensure time to be aware for smoother takeovers.

Before

After

Remove Switching to Automatic Mode on Screen

We disabled the ability to switch to Autonomous Mode from Manual Mode using a button on the screen. Riders sometimes took their hands off the steering wheel during Manual driving to press the button, which is dangerous.

Before

After

Metrics

We didn't have enough time to fully build out our final scooter prototype and run a Wizard of Oz test ,but if given the opportunity, I would focus on evaluating:


  • Trip completion efficiency. Measure the total time required for a user to start, ride, and complete a trip in autonomous mode.

  • Perceived safety and trust. Gather user ratings (1–10 scale) about how safe and trustworthy the scooter feels during automatic driving

  • Manual override responsiveness. Measure how quickly and easily a rider can switch from autonomous to manual control when needed.

    • Transfer reaction time — how long before the scooter is fully under manual control.

    • User-rated ease of takeover — how natural/safe it felt to regain control.


Reflections/What I Learned

  1. Iterate, Test, Learn fast. We built cardboard models of our scooters quickly to test out concepts fast - not the prettiest, but it's the most efficient way to move forward in the process.


  2. Challenge the norm. I am really proud of how we questioned the definition of a scooter and redefined and redesigned a scooter different from what a traditional one looks like. Not only did we reframe the design brief, but we reframed the core definition of the product.


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