Human-Machine Trust, Cognitive load and the Future of Public Transportation

Exploring casual, non-owner interaction with public transportation as an opportunity for the vehicle to increase levels of trust.

Much like driving a car, planning a route and navigating from A to B using public transportation in large cities can be quite an emotionally stressful experience. In fact, let’s say something provocative: although the users of public transport aren’t actually driving the vehicle, they are more active than passive in route management. When designing advanced mobility solutions, passenger acceptance and trust is a key factor for the successful integration, uptake and use of AVs in the domain of public transportation. The process of navigation is a continuous task requiring several visual and audio inputs, keeping track of the route and being alert, especially if it is a journey in a new area or unknown city. Attention to location and timing is crucial in the process of navigation.  Paying attention to navigation prevents users from going into “autopilot” mode, in which the mind can be free to read, sleep or just have a more relaxed journey. In my research, I suggest that decreasing the cognitive load for the user while they travel on public transport will result in greater trust and make the user experience better.

Women’s experience and state of mind in a transportation context poses a bigger challenge: they worry more about finding a seat,  navigating a crowded bus or dealing with the possibility of personal space violation. Focusing on women for initial research and interviews created an interesting narrative in which a high cognitive load started even before the journey began: crowds, planning, worrying about being late for work, avoiding other people, changing vehicle, or even transportation method, several times, finding and identifying the correct vehicle, sometimes asking the driver to wait, or open a door. Based on these insights I started mapping users' cognitive load points and tackling them with design interventions that could smooth out the experience and decrease the cognitive load.

My theory in this research is that cognitive load can be decreased by re-designing the interface between users and the vehicle itself,  and contribute significantly to increasing trust.

Gali Piflaks
Product & Design Researcher and Storyteller based in Tel Aviv