Kaspar Raats's research while affiliated with Halmstad University and other places

This paper investigates elements of trust in autonomous vehicles (AVs). We contextualise autonomous vehicles as part of people's everyday settings to extend previous understandings of trust and explore trust in autonomous vehicles in concrete social contexts. We conducted online co-creation workshops with 22 participants, using design probes to explore trust and AVs in relation to people's everyday lives. Using a socio-technical perspective, we show how trust and acceptance depend not only on the underlying AV technology but also – if not more so – on human-to-human relationships and real-life social circumstances. We argue that when investigating issues of trust and automation, the scope of analysis needs to be broadened to include a more complex socio-technical set of (human and non-human) agents, to extend from momentary human-computer interactions to a wider timescale, and be situated in concrete spaces, social networks, and situations.

This chapter explains how designing for future intelligent mobility systems is advanced by a human-centered approach, based in design anthropology. It provides an accessible introduction the theory and methodology of this approach, the production of ethnographic insights, and their translation into design probes for use workshops tailored to enable stakeholders to actively co-design future mobility and autonomous vehicle services and outlines the potentials and challenges of engaging diverse stakeholders—from industry and policy to the people who will use future technologies and services—in the development of future mobility.

The theoretical concept of trust has been identified as highly important to the successful design of intelligent technologies such as autonomous vehicles (AVs). In human-centred transport research this has resulted in a focus on trust in the technical design of future AVs and has raised the question of how the conditions that form trust change as technologies become more intelligent. In this article we discuss the first stage of an interdisciplinary project that brought together ethnographic and experimental user studies into trust in intelligent cars. This stage focused on the development of an interdisciplinary methodological framework for the user studies, through a review of 258 empirical HCI research articles on trust in automation and AVs. The review investigated the following research questions: a) what are the key themes in HCI methodologies used to research trust in automation and AVs; b) how do they account for trust in AVs as part of wider contexts; and c) how can these methodologies be developed to include more than momentary and individual human-machine interactions. We found that while theoretical understandings of trust in automated technologies acknowledge the relevance of the wider context in which the interaction occurs, existing methodologies predominantly involve experimental studies in simulated environments with a focus on reliance related aspects of trust. We identified that ethnographic user studies can potentially contribute to new connections between theoretical understandings and conventional experimental methods. Therefore, we propose a framework for an interdisciplinary approach that combines experimental and ethnographic methodologies to investigate trust in AVs.

In this article we demonstrate how design anthropology theory, methodology and practice can be mobilised to create interventions in how possible human futures with emerging technologies are understood and imagined. Drawing on our research into Human Experience and Expectations of Autonomous Driving (AD) cars we show how: we engaged ethnographic insights to redefine concepts of trust and sharing which contest dominant problem-solution narratives; and we mobilised these insights in applied contexts, through our AD Futures cards which employ ethnographic quotes and examples to disrupt common assumptions, align stakeholders with everyday experience, and pose new questions.

Experimental 'Wizard of Oz' (WOz) User Experience (UX) research in the context of Autonomous Driving (AD) car development is becoming more interdisciplinary, human-centric and open to innovative methodological collaborations. In this paper, we demonstrate a mixed-methodological approach to research how people engage with and make sense of automated features that do not yet exist in everyday life contexts. We present how the combination of WOz testing and ethnographic ride-alongs have been developed and how the two different approaches can benefit from each other. We selected two everyday driving examples - emerging from T-junction and changing lane on the motorway - to demonstrate the value of mixing these methodologies. We propose that by building new collaborative test practices, we can create a more everyday-life oriented approach that better attends to people's experiences, imaginaries and projections into possible futures of driving, which is particularly important to incorporate in AD vehicle design for mixed traffic environments.

The relationship between design anthropology and Participatory Design (PD) has developed along a shared interest in understanding interventions and possible futures. In this full-day workshop, we use future-oriented participatory and collaborative methodologies to expand our understanding of how we might further develop ethnographies of the possible and how a focus on imagination and unspoken experience of the making and using of possible future scenarios can underpin our understandings. We also discuss how the experience of and engagement with possible futures can enable novel modes of research practice, knowing and understanding.