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© Aleksander Rem 2015 Intuitive balance-based mobility interfaces - A framework for understanding balance as input in personal mobility devices Aleksander Rem http://www.duo.uio.no/ Trykk: Reprosentralen, Universitetet i Oslo II Intuitive balance-based mobility interfaces A framework for understanding balance as input in personal mobility devices Aleksander Rem November 2015 III IV Acknowledgement First of all, I want to thank my two great supervisors Joshi and Tone. A special thanks to Joshi for all the great support he has given me throughout my entire master project. Without your help, this thesis would most definitely not exist. Thanks also for always being available for guidance, even at inappropriate times like Sunday past 2am. I also want to thank everyone from the 9th floor a.k.a 9th grade. Thanks for all the great times playing the card game bullshit and our unnecessary long lunch breaks. They kept me going. Really. A special thanks also to Iben for helping me with proofreading. I want to particularly thank my girlfriend Aleksandra for supporting me through my insanity, helping with test facilitation, proofreading in the last writing stages and for letting me turn our living room into an electric skateboard workshop without complaining too much about it <3 I would also like to thank everyone who participated in my workshops, evaluated my prototypes and answered my survey. Thanks for all the great feedback and suggestions. In addition, of course, a big thanks to my family for being there for me and listening to my constant blabber about my thesis! Aleksander Rem, Oslo 16.11.2015. V VI Abstract This thesis examines how balance as input is used as a modality when controlling a personal mobility device. Through a user-centered design approach, we designed and built a fully functional mobility device prototype that uses balance as its only form of user input. We used an online survey for gathering needs and requirements, and created several design concepts and paper sketches through a focus group and design workshop. A balance controlled electric skateboard was chosen for further development, and iterated through paper prototyping. Two functional high-fidelity prototypes were constructed and tested in a formative and summative usability test with potential users. The prototypes were evaluated through a theoretical framework based on six aspects related to balance as input, which are: intuition, learnability, feedback, reusability, affordance and user experience (UX). The results showed that most of the participants found the final prototype intuitive. They showed progress during the test which indicates that a learning process occurred. The prototype gave the participants enough postural feedback, and those with a previous skateboard experience were able to use it when testing the electric skateboard, which indicates reusability. Even those that did not have previous experience were able to control the prototype after simple instructions, and every participant expressed how much fun they had using balance to control the prototype. To conclude, we have showed through our study that it is possible to use balance to control a personal mobility device in an intuitive way, and that the framework we proposed is a useful tool when evaluating balance as input. VII VIII Table of Contents LIST OF FIGURES ............................................................................................................ XIV 1 INTRODUCTION ............................................................................................................. 1 1.1 Research question ...................................................................................................................................... 1 1.2 Motivation .................................................................................................................................................. 2 1.2.1 Embodied interaction ............................................................................................................................. 2 1.2.2 Intuition ................................................................................................................................................. 2 1.2.3 Personal mobility devices ...................................................................................................................... 3 1.3 Structure ..................................................................................................................................................... 5 2 BACKGROUND ............................................................................................................... 7 2.1 What is a personal mobility device? .......................................................................................................... 7 2.2 What is balance? ........................................................................................................................................ 8 2.2.1 Why balance? ...................................................................................................................................... 10 2.3 Comparison of current PMD designs ....................................................................................................... 12 2.3.1 Segway ................................................................................................................................................ 13 2.3.2 E-bike .................................................................................................................................................. 14 2.3.3 Electric scooter .................................................................................................................................... 14 2.4 Legal issues .............................................................................................................................................. 15 2.4.1 The Segway law................................................................................................................................... 15 3 LITERATURE REVIEW .............................................................................................. 17 3.1 Balance as input ....................................................................................................................................... 17 3.2 Intuitive interfaces ................................................................................................................................... 19 3.3 UX of embodied interaction ..................................................................................................................... 20 3.4 Map of related work ................................................................................................................................. 21 4 THEORY ......................................................................................................................... 23 4.1 Paradigm, Ontology and Epistemology ................................................................................................... 23 4.2 Theoretical Foundation: Embodiment ...................................................................................................... 24 4.3 Theoretical Framework ............................................................................................................................ 24 4.3.1 Tacit Knowledge.................................................................................................................................. 25 4.3.2 Dreyfus Model of Skill Acquisition..................................................................................................... 28 4.3.3 The Natural User Interface .................................................................................................................. 30 IX 4.4 Framework: Application of Theory ......................................................................................................... 32 4.4.1 Intuition ............................................................................................................................................... 33 4.4.2 Learnability .......................................................................................................................................... 33 4.4.3 Feedback .............................................................................................................................................. 34 4.4.4 Reusability ........................................................................................................................................... 34 4.4.5 Affordance ........................................................................................................................................... 35 4.4.6 User Experience ................................................................................................................................... 35 4.4.7 Theoretical framework overview ......................................................................................................... 35 5 METHOD ........................................................................................................................ 37 5.1 Research Methodology ............................................................................................................................ 37 5.2 User-Centered Design .............................................................................................................................. 38 5.2.1 The UCD process model