2.1 Suggesting ‘what could be’

As mentioned, the technology that will fully enable autonomous driving is still in the future, which requires developers to envision this future in order to be able to design for it. Design always deals with an imagined future and design methods afford the opportunity to conduct research to understand the current state, and then to synthesize, sketch and prototype to identify an improved future state that is a desired outcome (Zimmerman and Forlizzi Reference Zimmerman, Forlizzi, Kellogg and Olsen2014). Reframing the problem and identifying the ultimate solution from an infinite set of possibilities is a challenging part of the work. It is much too easy to design future products, services, and systems that people and society will never accept; a key challenge is problem selection and solution framing (Dubberly et al. Reference Dubberly, Evenson and Robinson2008; Dorst Reference Dorst2011; Nelson and Stolterman Reference Nelson and Stolterman2012). The user-centered interaction design process implies that a design team starts by observing the situation of interest, understanding the current state, then making new things as a reflection of how the current state might be improved (Dubberly et al. Reference Dubberly, Evenson and Robinson2008). Critical in this process is moving from research findings to conception of a preferred future state. Dubberly et al. (Reference Dubberly, Evenson and Robinson2008) characterized this shift as the analysis–synthesis bridge, and developed a model to concisely describe four activities separated by three transition points (Figure 1).

Figure 1.

The analysis–synthesis bridge model, adapted from Dubberly, Evenson, and Robinson, Reference Dubberly, Evenson and Robinson2008.

The model describes how interaction designers work in a typical design process. Designers first collect concrete data about the world (lower-left quadrant). They transition to the upper left quadrant by analyzing their data and producing models that connect many interim findings together. This produces an abstract description of the current state that highlights both problems and opportunities to improve the future through redesign. Designers then progress to the upper-right quadrant by selecting a particular solution as an improved future state. Finally, designers transition to the lower-right quadrant by generating concepts that seek to achieve this preferred future state. Here, designs are iteratively prototyped. Dubberly et al. (Reference Dubberly, Evenson and Robinson2008) note that many designers skip the upper-right quadrant and transition from models of the present to concrete design concepts. When the upper-right quadrant of exploring the design space is neglected, valuable efforts of early exploration of concepts, that can save time in the later costly and effortful building of high-fidelity prototypes, are lost. Early efforts can question assumptions and promote disruptive ideas to emerge, rather than building on incremental changes of the existing (Verganti Reference Verganti2008).

In regard to autonomous vehicles, the novel and complex technology to enable these vehicles is at an early stage. This makes the leap between what can be investigated now, to understand users and requirements, to what could and ought to be designed as a future preferred state, very large. Design methods that allow a design team to ideate and explore interaction and social experience may help to close the design gap (Buchenau and Fulton-Suri Reference Buchenau and Fulton-Suri2000; Davidoff et al. Reference Davidoff, Lee, Dey and Zimmerman2007; Pettersson and Karlsson Reference Pettersson and Karlsson2015). Methods that focus on the upper-right quadrant can provide necessary exploration of novel ideas in the development of potential design solutions, using simple prototypes of potential solutions that function as tools for discovery to probe the interaction between people and technology and to test the impact of new technological solutions in the context of human use in new envisioned contexts (Woods and Christoffersen Reference Woods and Christoffersen2002). From the applications of these methods in a design process, the outputs of design not only feed new product development in industry, but can also develop new research ideas (Woods and Christoffersen Reference Woods and Christoffersen2002; Fallman Reference Fallman2008; Zimmerman and Forlizzi Reference Zimmerman, Forlizzi, Kellogg and Olsen2014).

Methods must therefore support envisioning the future, as it could be, in a way that is suitable for early stages of the design process. Methods in this area are important tools for bridging the gap between analysis and synthesis, but are yet largely unexplored for considering the social interactions in connection to autonomous vehicles. The methods need to concretely address the future design situation, and suggest a model of what ‘could be’. This is especially important for groundbreaking, novel technology, typically found to disrupt current assumptions of use.

2.2 Capturing social aspects

As identified in the introduction, there are several challenges connected to social experience with autonomous vehicles. Broadly, these cover three areas, each comprising design challenges of slightly different character; the social aspects of the vehicle as a social entity in traffic, the co-experience within using an autonomous vehicle, and finally the social aspects of the driver–vehicle relationship.

3.1 Methods for each area of social experience

The workshop covered the three identified themes within social interaction with vehicles, each theme using different methods (see Table 1). The methods have different epistemological roots and are meant to reveal different angles of the social aspects of autonomous vehicles, as briefly described below. All of the methods include both ideation as well as an engagement in, and analysis of, the suggested future, bringing out qualities in social communication, such as how information is requested and exchanged between agents and how a common understanding of current states and intentions emerge between cars and users. In addition to these specific methods, each theme also included elements of creation and making, in order to push participants to transfer their observations and abstract ideas into actual tangible representations; in other words, bridging the gap between Dubberly et al. (Reference Dubberly, Evenson and Robinson2008) upper quadrants; moving from interpretation to suggesting.

3.2 Analysis

As stated earlier, the aim of the study was to explore methods for imagining, investigating and ideating future social situations with autonomous vehicles. To analyze whether the methods were successful, we examined the design concepts and research directions identified for each theme of the workshop, along with the discussions taking place during the activities themselves. The participants’ assessments of their experience with the methods during the workshop were also taken into account. The data were analyzed using a qualitative, comparative lens, based on observation notes, videos, the participants workshop outputs, and the concluding joint discussions on concepts and methods held at the end of the workshop. In the analysis, the methods were assessed in their ability to support the participants in envisioning the future and their ability to capture social aspects (cf. Section 2). The outcomes from the different themes were compared to find common traits in the methods that were successful in addressing both the future and the social, as well as commonalities in their implementation which contributed to their level of success. Based on this analysis, we tried to formulate recommendations for which methodological directions are relevant to pursue further.

4.1 Theme A: the vehicle as a social entity in traffic

At the beginning, a brief introduction was given regarding the challenge of how communication with other road users should take place in the future when the person in the driver’s seat is not necessarily active in driving the vehicle. The design task given to the participants was to explore how vehicle intent can be communicated with other road users in the future, with the goal of creating new alternatives to those already proposed. To encourage insights and discussions of how autonomous vehicles are experienced, a field exercise was arranged where the participants could observe pedestrians (other participants in the workshop) and interact with a seemingly autonomous car (see Figure 2). The vehicle was set up using a Wizard of Oz approach in a real-world setting. The actual driver and steering wheel in a right-hand driven car were covered by an additional seat making the car seem driverless (Rothenbücher et al. Reference Rothenbücher, Li, Sirkin, Mok and Ju2016). The participants were invited to interact with the autonomous vehicle, to stimulate design reflections. The vehicle was driven around in a secluded block with sparse traffic, and the participants, acting in the role of pedestrians, were asked to interpret the intent of the vehicle and make decisions accordingly to cross the road in its presence. This was purposefully set up to trigger the participants with practical experience in the problem space, and aid the creation of new models of what could be in the upper-right quadrant of the analysis–synthesis bridge model in Figure 1.

The WOz approach was combined with the creation of small-scale scenarios where props (including a traffic mat, toy model die-cast cars, in addition to the material provided to all participants) and rapid prototyping techniques were used to represent traffic scenarios. The miniature representation was used to stage relevant use cases and develop ideas for further elicitation in the work group and finally as a presentation to all workshop participants.

4.2 Theme B: co-experience within the vehicle

The design task in this theme concentrated on exploring social situations in daily car use where the vehicle could play a supportive role, and then ideating design solutions that would facilitate co-experience and co-use in a selected situation. To initiate the work, a short pairwise interviewing session was held about personal daily commuting, including positive and negative social experiences, and design ideas derived from this. This was done to create awareness among the workshop participants about the social aspects of daily commuting and the co-experience of using vehicles. After the pairwise discussion, a joint discussion and ideation of design ideas was held. The discussion was gradually moved into a mock-up of a car, outlined on the floor with four seats, making use of the ‘setting the stage for self-driving cars method’ (Pettersson and Karlsson Reference Pettersson and Karlsson2015). The setup with an outline of a car served as a stage for enacting, conceptualizing and envisioning new social situations and facilitators. Props and discussion triggers for a future moving living room were available, such as personal possessions and clothing representing different types of users (e.g. children, teenagers, grown-ups, elderly), as well as prototyping material such as clay, paper, cardboard and pens. The participants were free to choose a scenario to their own liking, using their initial discussions as a springboard for ideation.

4.3 Theme C: the user–vehicle relationship

After a short presentation of the changing preconditions for interaction when vehicles gain agency, participants were first asked to explore which user–vehicle relationship they found desirable for the future and which variables needed to be considered in the exploration (e.g. hierarchy, trust, character). The theme utilized design metaphors to trigger the exploration of future human–vehicle interaction. Participants were presented with a selection of 10 currently existing relationships that could act as metaphors for the future desired relationship that should be established between the vehicle and the human occupant. The metaphors were collected from relevant literature, and included, for example, the relationship between a horse and rider (Flemisch et al. Reference Flemisch, Adams, Conway, Goodrich, Palmer and Schutte2003), and players on a sport team (Davidsson and Alm Reference Davidsson and Alm2009), together with a few others. Each metaphor was briefly described on a card and illustrated with a photo to form what is commonly known as design cards (see Figure 5). After the initial exploration, participants were asked to choose one metaphor and create an interaction based on it, considering the full range of interaction possibilities that a car offers and could offer in the future. Prototyping material was available to concretize the design and build a testable version of the interaction.

4.4 Participants

In total, 18 academic and industrial researchers participated in the research activity. The group consisted of 12 senior researchers, two PhD students, two master students and two research assistants. They covered different disciplines including human–computer interaction design, human factors, ethnography, human-centered design, robotics, engineering psychology and communication systems. Most of the participants were European. The participants were recruited via the conference website, and sent in applications to attend the workshop. To be accepted, participants described their view and experience of the social aspects of interaction with, and within, autonomous vehicles and indicated which of the three subthemes they were most interested in. The participants were then assigned by the organizers to a theme to ensure a good mix of disciplines and different levels of experience in each group.

6.1 Experiencing possible futures

The findings from literature and workshop show that methods need to help their users create a space to imagine and test what possible future experiences could be like, both in terms of which situations will be relevant to address, which problems can occur in them, and which preferred future states are possible. Dubberly et al. (Reference Dubberly, Evenson and Robinson2008) concluded that designers often skip the explorations of models of what ‘could be’ in order to (too) quickly advance into detailed concepts, indicating that methods should aid and encourage this stage and help bridge the wide gap between analysis and synthesis and address the third quadrant. The design methods incorporated in the workshop activities contained both analysis and synthesis elements, approaching both the ideation of tangible representations of the ideas and the exploration of them in future situations. However, we found that the tested methods were to a varying degree able to effectively explore possible futures, that is, able to bring future situations to life in the exploration and support reflection on which interactions problems would be relevant in such a future.

In the theme with the WOz demonstration, the activities quickly managed to put participants in the shoes of the future users of an autonomous vehicle by their role as road users. By testing real-world interaction with the autonomous vehicle, the participants acquired an understanding for the social interplay and negotiation of the situation that quickly landed them in the question of what a pedestrian needs to know from the vehicle. This was an experience they then took with them into the small-scale scenarios and served as a reflection during the further development, meaning that the experienced situation from the outside could be made accessible indoors by the helicopter view of the encountered scenario, mapping out the different stakeholders’ perspectives of the scene, as found in previous research (e.g. Broberg et al. Reference Broberg, Andersen and Seim2011). This enabled multiple perspectives on the problem at hand.

For theme B, the social aspects were much more directly addressed when the group moved into the vehicle and participants engaged in roleplaying, than in the initial discussion. In the mock-up vehicle, dimensions of how the physical environment would affect the social situation became evident (from sharing an enclosed space with strangers came the ideas of e.g. the panic button) as well as engaging in making the problems tangible in representations such as buttons and screens and modes for Samaritan efforts. As found in previous research (e.g. Buchenau and Fulton-Suri Reference Buchenau and Fulton-Suri2000; Arvola & Artman Reference Arvola and Artman2007), the enactment, grounded in a consideration of embodied experiences (Wilde et al. Reference Wilde, Vallgårda and Tomico2017), did play an important role for bringing concreteness into the exploration and capturing the dynamics and the tacit aspects of the interaction design as well as provide a space for the group of designers/researchers to improvise and together create a common focus of a future design. All through the experimentation there was a balancing act between overly specified and close-ended scenarios and aiming for too wide scopes to be handled during one ideation session. This was especially evident in theme B, that extended long beyond the initial focus on co-experience inside the car to encompass many societal issues connected to future transportation systems at large. For theme C, using the metaphor cards, the session seemed to have remained too abstract and in the group discussions it was argued that a more precise scenario and set preconditions would have been beneficial, as the type of relationship that could be imagined depends very much on the state of the technology. In the end, the group chose a future quite close to reality with automated drive in specific, controlled, zones. The other two themes instead focused further into the future with their ideas, where autonomous cars had become a natural element in both the traffic environment and daily practices.

In conclusion, two of the explorations – WOz with small-scale scenarios and enactment – gave more fruitful discussions concerning possible futures, both in terms of discussions and in design ideas. We see a number of reasons for this. One important feature that was present in both WOz and enactment was contextualization. In both cases, the participants were invited into the situation they were designing for in a concrete form by experiencing the WOz car in a real-life traffic situation, or by enacting the situation in the pretend vehicle. This indicates the importance of creating immersed experiences of future technology in order to be able to design the interactions with it, i.e. simulating situations that can probe into the future. Both approaches included of physical artifacts; the WOz car, as well as toy cars and play mats, were used to concretize the participants experiences and ideation, while the enactment approach used chairs arranged as a vehicle and also a collection of props to help them enter different roles during the role play. The use of physical objects to relate to and to modify has been exemplified in foremost participatory design approaches as useful for understanding use and users (Brandt and Grunnet Reference Brandt and Grunnet2000; Sanders et al. Reference Sanders, Brandt and Binder2010; Broberg et al. Reference Broberg, Andersen and Seim2011). Contextualization appears to have triggered a higher degree of empathic awareness and presence (cf. Buchenau and Fulton-Suri Reference Buchenau and Fulton-Suri2000) than the more philosophical eyes on the issue triggered by the cards in the design metaphors. It also appears to have induced a more direct involvement with the solutions, again in comparison to the more abstract discussion when using design metaphors.

6.2 Challenging underlying assumptions

Since cars are such a big part of current culture, we carry many deeply held assumptions of how we should interact with them. To establish a preferred future interaction, it appears necessary to challenge these current practices of interacting with the vehicle itself, and which role it will play in future interactions between people. At the early stages of autonomous vehicle development, methods need to guide the exploration of new conceptual directions and allow new themes to emerge in the design space, before developing concrete solutions.

We found that the methodological approaches were to a varying degree able to surface current underlying assumptions and challenge them, in terms of for example highlighting the substantial role that social aspects already play in traffic. The WOz experience expanded participants view on what the social situation was, that it is not only one vehicle and one pedestrian, but a social interaction within a traffic situation with multiple road users. This enabling of multiple perspectives sets the research apart from previous research examples, where only the one to one interaction has been considered (e.g. Lundgren et al. Reference Lundgren, Lagström, Habibovic, Andersson, Nilsson, Sirkka, Fagerlönn, Edgren, Fredriksson, Krupenia, Saluäär and Larsson2016; Rothenbücher et al. Reference Rothenbücher, Li, Sirkin, Mok and Ju2016; Beggiato et al. Reference Beggiato, Witzlack and Krems2017), and contributed to a disruption in current thinking. In the theme of social interactions within the vehicle, the design concept also expanded from concentrating on one individual, which is the dominant perspective in todays research and design (e.g. Volvo Concept 26 and Mercedes-Benz F 015). The enactment highlighted the challenge to design for trust and security when sharing the car as an enclosed space, as well as service functionality for sharing car as an act of promoting social and environmental sustainability. In theme C, the metaphors as descriptions of potential future relationships with the car did not challenge the ‘one user’ perspective, but they did bring the discussion of what an autonomous car really changes in terms of interaction. They managed to put the vehicle’s new agency in focus, and disrupt assumptions regarding what it is that we are interacting with when the intelligence of the vehicle increases; the vehicle itself like before, the intelligent computer driving the vehicle, or a number of computers controlling different parts of a vehicle? However, while the theme A and B reinterpreted the social situations and their associated assumptions, theme C chose to stay with the current interpretation of direct control of the vehicle as they felt it to be safer and less ambiguous. Not being disruptive is not necessarily a bad thing, but the concept through its design ignored some important sensitive social situations, for example negotiation and conflict of intentions.

The methods also worked to include different perspectives of research into the topic; they enabled teams to gather cross-disciplinary views connected to social experiences around highly automated vehicles, especially so in the enactment and the small-scale scenario, which were more open to free manipulation, showing and telling. The workshop gathered researchers and practitioners from different fields, which provided an additional dimension to the workshop, perhaps the most important positive outcome of the activity; we emphasize that multidisciplinarity will be necessary to address the social aspects connected to automated vehicles, given the multitude of perspectives the area touches upon. For example, competences from interaction design need to closely collaborate with software developers, for instance, within machine learning, as well as hardware developers and user researchers. The workshop format provided a way to test the design approach and the specific techniques in a cross-disciplinary group.

In this context, the contextualizing techniques, which provided an experience and empathic understanding of the users in the context, served an additional purpose. They acted as a leveler among the participants, placing them all on the same page and with the same ownership of the problem at hand. This was for example evident in theme B, where the creation of concepts through enactment served as a leveler of the discussions, where the initial discussions were dominated by the ethnographic perspective. This can be compared to the role that methods play in creating team participation in, for example, usability studies (Wixon Reference Wixon2003). In the design metaphors approach, which had a very limited experiencing dimension, there was a tendency for one issue, safety, from one discipline to dominate the discussion more. Safety is a crucial issue when it comes to human–vehicle interaction, but was not the main interest in this research activity.

In essence, all tested methods managed to surface underlying assumptions and alternative interpretations by providing insight into a what a potential future could be like and bring different disciplinary perspectives to the forefront. However, the contextualizing techniques managed to also bring the groups to a joint and evolved understanding on which to develop a concept.

6.3 Engaging in social experiences

To be able to address the social aspects of autonomous vehicles, we found that it was necessary to use methods that help the participants to experience and engage in the social situations. Engagement can help define what types of collaboration and social relationships that are likely to emerge in autonomous cars, and hone in the exploration and ideation on the communicative aspects, in a way that highlights the vehicle’s new agency and new situations of use. As stated, the communication and flow of information needs to go both ways between humans and vehicle when automation increases and there is a need to create a mutual understanding between vehicle and human(s) of current states and intentions (Beller et al. Reference Beller, Heesen and Vollrath2013; Sibi et al. Reference Sibi, Ayaz, Kuhns, Sirkin and Ju2016; Pettersson and Ju Reference Pettersson and Ju2017). It is worth noting that each tested method only addressed a part of the design space and social aspects. The use of these specific methods may limit the concept development in specific directions. For instance, there is reason to expect that the ‘setting the stage’ methodology (Pettersson and Karlsson Reference Pettersson and Karlsson2015) in the enactment approach had implications on the modality of interaction – much of the communication between human and system in the concept was voice-based, possibly because ease of staging voice interactions in contrast to the extra efforts of creating visual or haptic interfaces for communication in the mock-up car. However, it also enabled the inclusion of multiple users, and was thus fitted to the topic of co-experiences of mutually using an autonomous vehicle, as previously explored (Jorlöv et al. Reference Jorlöv, Bohman and Larsson2017).

The use of the metaphors certainly triggered discussion about what the relationship between the vehicle and human should be like, at least in terms of the hierarchy and who should make the decisions. As mentioned, much of the discussion focused on where social interaction should unfold. The metaphors appear to not have included enough structure or information content to settle the issue, as they could be interpreted differently depending on reading and preconceptions. In a sense, the discussion also centered around whether you wanted to be social with the vehicle at all, or whether it was useful to consider the vehicle to be a social agent rather than just an advanced piece of machinery. The de-contextualized and abstract discussion had effects on the developed concept, which did not evolve much during the session. The initial discussions of theme B held a similar abstract pattern, but became more balanced and more detailed when entering the enactment stage.

Both the group addressing social co-experiences, and the group addressing the relationship with the vehicle explored a range of social situations, or how the social dimensions came to play in different future contexts of use, which allowed them to gain novel insights and challenge assumptions. This can be connected to their broad point of entry, lacking a set scenario. Theme A on the other hand quickly limited their social situation to only pedestrians crossing the street in front of the vehicle because this was the social scenario that they experienced in the WOz. This allowed them to dig deep into this particular situation and the communication of intentions and awareness, but may have narrowed the transferability of the solution. The addition of the small-scale scenario method played an important role in bringing in more social situations in the exploration. In the discussion and ideation, participants were able to shift between the WOz and small-scale perspectives, giving them a systems perspective on the issue at hand. The helicopter perspective (Broberg et al. Reference Broberg, Andersen and Seim2011) of the scene allowed the researchers to access the situation after leaving the field and served as a probe for communication between the participants. To a degree, theme B also included elements of this shift in perspectives. The initial interviews and discussion related both to the perspectives of different users and stakeholders and the role of autonomous cars on a society level, which led to a concept based on the potential for sharing cars and service development connected to autonomous vehicles. The enactment in the vehicle representation on the other hand made the individual experience concrete and clarified design demands stemming from such new services. The added insight of these shifts indicate that multiple methods should preferably be used to capture the social dimensions from a systems perspective.

6.4 Recommendations

The analysis of the results indicates important methodological aspects to ensure that single, and multiple methods, can achieve the desired effects, i.e. enable an understanding of future experiences, challenge assumptions, and engage in social aspects. We summarize these and recommend the use of methodology by which:

1. (1) The interaction is contextualized, in other words the interaction is placed in one or more specific, future scenarios. This can be promoted by for example including a mix between field work, establishing a united understanding of the problem, and exploration using tangible objects, such as enactment scenes with props as in theme A and B.

2. (2) The interaction between social entities is addressed in suitable detail. This requires a balance between being abstract in describing designs and specific in scenarios. While going deeper than a general discussion is necessary, there should be enough flexibility for exploring different paths of communication between user(s) and system, and room left for ideation and challenging assumptions. In theme B, enactment was especially useful for progressing beyond general discussion and instead becoming concrete about interactions, whilst retaining speed and plasticity in ideation.

3. (3) The investigation supports multiple perspectives on social interaction. This can for example be achieved by combination of methods that enables shifts in perspectives, like the shift between road user and helicopter view in theme A, or that every personal or disciplinary perspective is brought to the table as in the peer-to-peer interviews in theme B.

4. (4) The communicative aspects are focused upon, i.e. the ability to create mutual understanding of each others intentions and abilities. This requires that both human and vehicle agency can be represented and explored in the methods. In theme A and B, the WOz-vehicle and the enacted scenario facilitate such understanding by a physical meeting between agents where the meaning of intentions and abilities can be explored.

We believe that researchers and practitioners alike can benefit from these recommendations when envisioning possible futures and designing for social interactions with autonomous vehicles.

6.5 Limitations and future work

This paper presents a first exploration of the design space of social aspects in autonomous vehicles and the methods that could be used to address them in the early stages of the design process. The set of methods were approached with slightly different scenarios, aim and set of participants, and of course, no structured concluding comparison could be made. This limits the power with which the recommendations can be made. Our hope is that it can serve as a platform for necessary further studies and experiments to confirm or contradict the results of this study.

The methods selected for this workshop and discussed here are not the only methods available for bridging the synthesis and analysis gap in this very early stage of the design process (see e.g. Halse et al. Reference Halse, Brandt, Clark and Binder2010, Pettersson and Ju Reference Pettersson and Ju2017). Additional methods could probably be used with similar results, as long as they contain the necessary contextualization of future situations, physicality and experience to challenge assumptions and unite around, as well as possibility to explore two-way communication. Using this type of quick-and-dirty exploration and ideation methods allows for the combination of several methods and rapid shifts in between them, which was seen as fruitful. The exact combination of methods needs further investigation in future studies, for example addressing questions of whether to start wide and then narrow down as in theme B, or start narrow and then broaden as in A.

Compared to more detailed concept explorations, the ideas that come out are less resolved and harder to evaluate thoroughly. However, as mentioned in the introduction, at this early stage of autonomous vehicle development it is important to discuss the conceptual directions of development and what could be, and follow Dubberly et al. (Reference Dubberly, Evenson and Robinson2008) advice on avoiding jumping to detailed solutions directly. The workshop was indeed a short version of the synthesis–analysis bridge process, but as such was able to raise important concerns for methodologies suited for multiperspective explorations needed in a rapidly developing area of automated vehicles.

As pointed out earlier, poor design solutions for autonomous cars can lead to potentially very problematic social experiences, and the earlier we can access, explore and guide design in these situations, the better. Nevertheless, there are improvements to be made for future activities. A common reflection from participants was that it would have been helpful if the scenarios they had to work with had been more defined. It was perceived as beneficial if the parameters of design space, such as target demographic, context constraints, and specific situations, could have been given from the start of the workshop. However, being too constrained in scenario can also limit the possible futures explored and the social dimensions covered.

In the workshop, the themes of different types of social interaction were explored separately. An important next step would be to include all themes in a holistic approach in order to explore potential conflicts between social dimensions. In the end, there must be a unified concept for a vehicle that can handle all identified social interactions (and those yet to be imagined). The workshop also produced worthwhile ideas for future development and research, such as the concept for creating a mutual understanding of the vehicles vision and intentions, as well as interface for increasing safety and trust in shared mobility. These ideas should be explored further, and fed into the next cycle of analysis and synthesis. This will include more detailed concept, more situations, but importantly also potential future users. By expanding the activities to include users and their reception of the concepts, cultural aspects could also be further explored, which is another pressing issue in relation to autonomous vehicles (Vinkhuyzen and Cefkin Reference Vinkhuyzen and Cefkin2016). User inclusion would require further consideration to ethical implications, especially in field activities such as WOz.