This thesis focuses on solving the problem of obesity amongst truck drivers. The project will look at the near future of 5 to 10 years` time and focuses solely on the European truck market.
This project was carried out in collaboration with the Vehicle Ergonomics (RCDE) team at Scania, in Södertälje. For the thesis the Vision in Product Design (ViP) method is used, since this method has a strong user-centric focus. ViP asks the designer to look at the past and the current product before starting to design the future one. This in terms influenced the setup of the thesis by dividing it into three main chapters: Past, Now and Future. The first and second chapter - Past and Now - focus on deconstructing the problem.
The first chapter, the past, gives an understanding of the world of trucking through its history. It shows how important the context is and how much it influences the truck and subsequently the trucker.
In the second chapter the focus is on the current trucking industry. Research about the context here shows that truck manufacturers are keen on embracing autonomous driving technologies. In addition, an extensive literature research about health is concluded with the creation of the Health Map, which shows relationship of health and trucking (see the attached Health Map).
On the other hand, user research included context mapping and interviews with six truck drivers brought out the insecurities truck drivers feel regarding new developments. The findings from the interviews together with shadowing truckers have given insight in a day of a trucker, which are visualized in the form of a Customer Journey. The insights from the Customer Journey and the Health Map are combined to identify the main pain areas regarding health: stress, fatigue, solitude and feeling misunderstood (see Customer Journey).
The chapter is concluded with a design goal, which is to tackle the problem of obesity amongst truck drivers by eliciting behaviour change through the use of the truck’s interior.
The final chapter comprises the design of a solution for the stated problem. It starts with a created interaction vision: Driving tomorrow`s Scania is like being a plant growing in a greenhouse. This vision together with the interaction qualities are used to create solutions for the pain areas found. Next to that a future context is created, in which the truck driver has an observational role rather than being an active driver.
These solutions are evaluated with the RCDE team and the truck drivers, which forms the first design iteration. The second iteration focuses on creating a system that would support the trucker in changing their behaviour. A mockup is used to test the system with five truck drivers. This gave insights for the third iteration, which focuses on creating the behaviour tasks. Three different tasks are created to elicit behaviour change: shoulder movement task, breathing task and a game. These are evaluated by creating screens and presenting them to two truck drivers.The results from the iterations are used to create the final concept, which is a system that monitors the truck driver and supports him/her by offering various tasks aimed at tackling the earlier mentioned pain areas when they arise. The system needs to guide and ultimately act as a friend to the trucker, since that has shown to increase the acceptability of autonomous vehicles.