WRA491: iOS Design Lab

<aside> <img src="/icons/bus-double-decker_lightgray.svg" alt="/icons/bus-double-decker_lightgray.svg" width="40px" /> Project Background (Fall 2023)

• In May 2022, Michigan State University introduced its first electric and autonomous bus, the only one in the US.
• The new electric autonomous bus is made possible through a collaboration with the state of Michigan, bus manufacturer Karsan and ADASTEC, a Turkish company based in Michigan delivering advanced automated transportation platforms for full size commercial vehicles.
• The campus services director at MSU came to our iOS design lab with the problem of how to get more students to ride the bus. Our job as a team was to develop a solution for this over 4 weeks, and our final solutions in teams were presented to CEO Ali Peker, product management director Cemre Kavvasoğlu, and campus service director Adam Lawver </aside>

<aside> <img src="/icons/clipping_lightgray.svg" alt="/icons/clipping_lightgray.svg" width="40px" /> Our group is currently working further on this project for Spring 2023, around education of the bus technology through a unique learning kit solution, targeted towards school children and the general public to learn about autonomous bus technology. This includes educating about Adastec’s flowride.ai Level-4 Automated Driving Software Platform, LiDAR, and AI

</aside>

Contents:

Fall 2023:

Problem Statement

College students, including commuters, are frustrated that the buses on campus are unreliable, and are unaware of the autonomous bus as an alternative.

How might we…

increase ridership, by showcasing the reliability of the autonomous bus to MSU students?

The process

• As a group, we brainstormed on ways to understand the problem further. We decided to conduct a preliminary survey on MSU students understanding how much they knew about the bus
  • We wanted to be able to keep a route similar to the existing one, however limit amount of additional stops

Solution

• The solution we proposed was increased awareness of the bus through:
  • Changing the route of the bus due to the international center instead of the auditorium
  • Creation of flyers that would interest students around the campus to know about the bus
    • Brainstorming included thinking of different ways the students could be included: such as making it relate to students interested in certain hobbies (such as the AI club, technology clubs/groups, etc.)

Our presentation

Autonomus Bus Presentation (1).pdf

Key Takeaways

• Through this experience, we learned through about collaboration and working together to create one solution
• Looking to all of the different factors that a user experiences is important, not just the problem
  • Each user has a different life experience, even if in the same age range
• This project was very interesting to work on, and learn about the autonomous technology that runs the bus. Our team may be working on this project further during the Spring 2023 semester, through looking at the different aspects of the autonomous bus (not only student ridership)