Using UCEID to Include the Excluded

Autonomous vehicle interface design represents a challenge combining the hard constraints and risks of a safety-critical domain, with the softer personal preference and market-driven competitive constraints that consumer product designs face. This challenge of the design of a consumer product interface for the extremely diverse potential users, in the context of a safety-critical scenario, brought together human factors methods for complex sociotechnical systems along with those developed for consumer inclusive design. The goal of this approach was to combine the rigour of methods validated in safety-critical contexts, with inclusive, creative, and empathic design methods used in the consumer product design and development. Inclusive design accepts that capabilities in the population are not evenly distributed, and advocates that those with less capability – whether due to age-related changes, disability, or low technological interface experience – should not be unnecessarily discriminated against in the process of designing products and services, nor in the design outcome. The user-centred ecological interface design (UCEID) process was developed to structure the design process for the human–machine interface (HMI), where the three phases explored the user's needs, created design solutions, and evaluated the extent to which their needs would be met. Activities were carried out iteratively within the Explore, Create, and Evaluate categories to identify the pertinent needs, to develop potential solutions to those needs, and to assess how well each potential solution met the needs. This chapter reports on the process outcomes of the stages of the design phases of the HMI to show the effect and influences of this approach on the design ideas and concepts to include and support users through the takeover process.