Hyundai's Air Taxi

6 months

Deliverables

• Passenger experience journey map
• Passenger experience narrative
• Insights and opportunities
• Sample design concepts and internal/external collaborations
• Themes and topics for future research phases

Role

Co-Lead UX Researcher

Methods

Discovery Research

• Stakeholder interviews
• Literature review (internal and external research reports)
• Market research

Usability Research

• In-person testing with a cabin prototype in the enginnering office
• Intercept interviews at the National Business Aviation Association (NBAA) convention
• Surveys
• Competitor assessment

Remote Research

• Diary study

*Slides below shocase the program's methodologies. Sensitive names and concepts have been blurred for confidentiality.

Reflection

Generative research has always been a greater yet more exciting challenge for me. In this case, I had the opportunity to work on a futuristic space that everyone expects to come but sometimes with completely different visions. Of the many generative projects I've worked on, this one felt the most blue sky and had the most tangential data to sift through. My greatest challenge in this project was keeping the insights grounded while providing Supernal with solid and clear directions for future research.

My main 3 takeaways:

• Different experiences may require different expertise.
  This was one of the few opportunities I've had in recent years to work with physical and spatial design. Although it was exciting to be in a lab and test the usability of the cabin prototype, I quickly recognized my lack of expertise in ergonomic design. By the second round of these usability studies, we brought in an expert to observe and advise us on how to improve our research protocol. While the basics of experience research remains -- for instance, test for a singular change at a time and keep the rest of the environment constant -- there are ways to probe and observe that differ from the UX research that I am used to with software. When there are gaps in your knowledge or shortcomings in your research plans, having an additional/different expert opinion can benefit everyone involved.

• Specificity is a double-edged sword.
  We had always known that this project was very broad and that our goal was to discover what questions to be asking, what areas to be looking at, etc. We were essentially step 1 of their UXR journey. Although the richest insights can come from asking follow up questions and specific probes, doing so would take away time and effort from the set of planned general questions. This would lead to inconsistency in the level of insights, where the more specific insights may not be appropriate for phase 2 of research and later forgotten. Similarly, while the NBAA convention provided a great opportunity for research, the audience provided biased data and we began jumping into persona territory for future research phases. Throughout this project, I repeatedly reminded myself to stick to the research goals and maintain at a level of specificity and brevity.

• Researchers must advocate for their research needs.
  Due to a number of logistical mishaps and obstacles, the research program reached a point where there were gaps in the journey which we had no insight into. I believed a diary study would be the most efficient and effective way to fill in those gaps while maintaining a reasonable budget and timeline. Despite facing initial pushback, we were able to reach an alignment with our Supernal partners and conduct the diary study in the final weeks of the project. Ultimately, we were able to provide well-rounded deliverables and touch on the key aspects of the user experience journey in large part thanks to the diary study, and all parties were pleased with the deliverables.