I drove together with a truck driver for 1 day in order to get to know the context better.

By doing a cultural probes study I discovered several opportunities to design for.

The final design was modeled on a smart-phone and a heuristic evaluation was performed.

For this project a concept that helped truck drivers in their daily tasks, and served their social needs, was created. The project was done for DAF. The first focus was to design something to fight boredom, but after a cultural study among truck drivers the decision was made that the needs towards control and relatedness offered much greater opportunities.

Description

Truck drivers spend many hours on the road and are usually highly skilled, so that driving is no longer challenging or fun, but boring. Truck drivers have various ways to deal with boredom. Both boredom itself and some of the more obvious ways to cope with boredom lead to reduced attention, therewith causing safety hazards. The aim of the project was two-fold: (a) to get a good understanding of how truck drivers experience this situation and how they deal with it; (b) to develop and validate concepts employing novel technologies, which help drivers to fight boredom while maintaining safety.

For this project I have, as it is called, reframed the problem statement. In order to fight boredom I had to understand what boredom is and what it does to truck drivers. In order to understand the truck drivers I have used the technique Cultural Probes in combination with interviews and the think-a-loud method. I asked the truck drivers to make several pictures during an ordinary day. I used the pictures during an interview session as input to detect boredom and the actions of the truck drivers when they are bored.

From the cultural research was seen that truck drivers plan inside their head the entire day and the other activity is making phone calls. From the literature study it was seen that boredom occurs when drivers have spare time, this study has showed that drivers do not have much of spare time. The results showed that truck drivers never feel bored but do have the need for control and relatedness. Truck drivers of the current day feel a very high pressure because of very strict working hours and demands of clients. Next to this I found several opportunities of needs that could be improved.

The prototype I created gave extra information about the address’ the truck driver had to drive to. Truck drivers can provide information by themselves with proposed guidelines; which should provide the drivers within their need for control. Next to that, truck drivers can see where their colleagues are at every moment; which should provide the drivers within their need for relatedness. During a final Heuristics evaluation it was seen that Drivers were happy using this prototype and they want to see such things happening for real.

Coach

dr. Jacques Terken

Client

DAF Trucks Eindhoven