Affective scenarios in automotive design: a human-centred approach towards understanding of emotional experience

Abstract

The automotive industry is facing a period of significant transformation due to the arrival of many new digital technologies. As the focus of automotive engineering has shifted from hardware to software, the conventional processes of making, buying and owning an automobile have changed. Peoples’ desires for new automotive experiences are increasing; they demand more sophisticated approaches to the automotive experience beyond merely improving functional requirements for advanced automation systems, interfaces and connectivity. Thus, it is essential to understand human experience in order to help people deal with the high degree of complexity in the driving environment and to help them to cope with unanticipated driving events that involve emotional, psychological or sociological issues. This research takes a human-centred approach to investigating real-life scenarios in which people emotionally engage with automobiles with the aim of developing a relevant set of scenarios for this context. An extensive literature review was conducted of human emotion, memory systems, emotional memory characteristics, scenarios, and scenarios with emotional aspects, followed by a discussion defining scenario development process and affective scenarios. This research provides a methodology for in-depth qualitative studies that develop affective design scenarios with automobiles. As a triangulation approach, two independent studies in different settings explored affective scenario themes in automotive contexts of people’s real-life car stories that made them respond emotionally. The themes that were revealed from both studies were consolidated, and exemplary scenarios of 13 consolidated main themes were formulated to illustrate a set of affective scenarios in automotive contexts. This research leads to an enhanced understanding of a set of critical contexts that automotive practitioners should take into account for future automotive design. Suggestions with possible questions based on the research outcome provide opportunities for them to agilely cope with unanticipated future events, whereby highly complex driving environment by connected and autonomous vehicles. This methodology used here can be replicated for future affective scenario studies focusing on specific products, sub-systems or services such as navigation systems or car-sharing services. The results, which have been validated through a triangulation approach, can bolster the automobile design process by addressing potential issues and challenges in automotive experience by facilitating idea generation, enhancing a shared understanding of critical contexts and by assisting decision-making among stakeholders from different departments.