2019
Senior Thesis: Product Design & Industrial Design
The big picture: Nota is an autonomous chauffeur that takes inspiration from the wellness and hospitality industries to offer riders an unmatched level of service and experience on the go.
Riders leading demanding lifestyles need time to recover.
Nota helps riders to recover in a calming space where they can meditate, sleep, or work on the go, with thoughtful features & amenities.
Nota saves riders time with clarity and simplicity. The entire journey, from booking a ride, to wayfinding, and controlling the vehicle’s interior space exist within a beautiful mobile application.
Nota was my Senior Thesis project - completed at the College for Creative Studies in 2019. This project is very conceptual in nature, and explores the potential of user experiences that may be enabled by autonomous technology.
Studio Brief: To design an autonomous rideshare experience
My approach: I wanted to envision what a luxurious, and seamless autonomous ride share experience may look like, and leverage both the User Experience and Industrial Design disciplines.
Luxury transportation is not only about status—riders value wellbeing and time optimization. While people do desire unique & lavish experiences there appeared to be a much deeper, and more practical reason that people are drawn to luxury transportation.
Optimizing recovery: Business travelers fly first class so that they can “hit the ground running”, and optimize their recovery time.
Demanding careers: Luxury travelers reported having a demanding career and needing to work on the go as being a reason to book luxury transportation.
(I read blogs about flying business class, or using a chauffeur services, forums & industry research reports to gain conduct research about luxury transportation)
The experience needs to build off of a foundation of safety, clarity, and simplicity, before it surpasses the rider’s expectations and meets their needs on a deeper level.
The rider can rely on the mobile app to control their entire experience. Riders can book, customize, and fully control the autonomous vehicle/interior all within the mobile app.
An alternative solution would be to introduce controls into the vehicle; however, considering that the rider is already familiar with the mobile interface, and trusts it to communicate with the vehicle during the booking and pick-up experience, continuing to use it in the vehicle would likely be intuitive to the rider.
Central hub for booking rides and exploring Nota’s brand stories and offerings.
Booking Made Simple: Immediate interaction with booking feature.Immersion into
brand storytelling: important part of making Nota a meaningful luxury experience
For riders that are hungry or thirsty after a long flight, or too busy to eat between a busy work schedule - Pre-select amenities like snacks and warm hand towels, ready upon pickup.
During ride app displays navigation, and a panel to control the vehicle.
Trust & Security: Riders have Immediate and persistent access to pause ride, help & edit trip features
Environment control: full control of temperature, light, and audio.
Unique experiences: Guided meditations can be played in vehicle and sync with lighting.
The interior climate, audio, comfort, and emergency controls can all be accessed intuitively within the mobile app, so there is no control interface built into the vehicle.
The space is a contemporary lounge, offering a flexible, creative, and relaxing environment for riders to work or rest. The organic layout is soothing, and lets riders move freely and pull out a laptop, or take a nap.