Aleksandra Walczak: Developing Multidisciplinary Designer & UX Specialist
Aleksandra is a multidisciplinary designer specialising in User Experience and studying for a Master’s degree in User Experience Design (UXD) at Falmouth University. Her research interests include Human Behaviour, Psychology, Artificial Intelligence, and Augmented Reality. This article shares her background and recent research project in User Experience Research.
I’m a multidisciplinary designer specialising in User Experience. I have an MSc in Architecture, where I learned to design everything from development strategy through complex systems to visual design. I have worked on all stages of projects, both small and large, and I am always excited to learn the domain, understand the unique challenges involved and provide solutions that fulfil both business and user needs.
Career Aspirations: How and why I chose to do an MA in UXD university degree
My professional experience working as a UX/UI Designer has given me a lot of practical skills. Therefore, I decided to pursue an MA in UX Design at Falmouth University to develop a broader range of skills in UXD. I was also interested in expanding my UX Research skills, and Falmouth University had an entire module devoted to this topic. The mixture of online lectures and self-directed part-time study over two years at Falmouth has allowed me the flexibility I need to combine my course with my full-time work. During my studies, I have found areas where I could improve and explore different methods, directions and design angles in an academic environment.
Finally, as the participants came from all around the world, I established new connections, expanded my knowledge and was able to see diverse international perspectives.
UX Research | MA coursework
Title: Trust: User Experience of Augmented Reality Heads-up Displays in Autonomous Vehicles
Abstract:
Autonomous vehicles may replace human drivers, leading to fewer accidents. However, people are scared about what their car will do next or overtrust the technology (Banks et al. 2018). Because cars have not reached fully self-driving capability, overtrusting them can lead to accidents. Prior research has shown the potential of augmented reality in improving trust in autonomous vehicles (e.g. Colley et al., 2021; Oliveira et al., 2020; von Sawitzky et al., 2019). In 2021 Panasonic released a proof of concept of an Augmented Reality Heads-Up Display (Panasonic 2021). This research compares that system with Tesla’s commercially available interface using a video simulation. The results in this paper indicate higher levels of trust in the Panasonic system. These results align with previous research stating that transparency improves trust. As Autonomous Vehicle technology is improving rapidly, there is also a need to improve the User Experience of autonomous vehicles. There is a need to improve the graphic representation of what the vehicle is seeing and how it will behave in the future.
Furthermore, the study defines numerous situations where people would not trust an autonomous system. These could be used as a starting point for further research to identify the path toward improvements. However, as the research has been conducted using a simulation, the results should be considered with care.
References:
BANKS, Victoria A., Alexander ERIKSSON, Jim O’DONOGHUE and Neville A. STANTON. 2018. ‘Is Partially Automated Driving a Bad Idea? Observations from an on-Road Study’. Applied ergonomics 68, 138–45.
COLLEY, Mark, Svenja KRAUSS, Mirjam LANZER and Enrico RUKZIO. 2021. ‘How Should Automated Vehicles Communicate Critical Situations? A Comparative Analysis of Visualization Concepts’. Proc. ACM Interact. Mob. Wearable Ubiquitous Technol. 5(3), 1–23.
OLIVEIRA, Luis et al. 2020. ‘The Influence of System Transparency on Trust: Evaluating Interfaces in a Highly Automated Vehicle’. Transportation research. Part F, Traffic psychology and behaviour 72, 280–96.
PANASONIC. 2021. ‘Panasonic Automotive Brings Expansive, Artificial Intelligence-Enhanced Situational Awareness to the Driver Experience with Augmented Reality Head-Up Display’. [online]. Available at: https://na.panasonic.com/us/news/panasonic-automotive-brings-expansive-artificial-intelligence-enhanced-situational-awareness-driver [accessed 11 Dec 2021].
VON SAWITZKY, Tamara, Philipp WINTERSBERGER, Andreas RIENER and Joseph L. GABBARD. 2019. ‘Increasing Trust in Fully Automated Driving: Route Indication on an Augmented Reality Head-up Display’. In Proceedings of the 8th ACM International Symposium on Pervasive Displays. 1–7.
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