Nissan Research Labs:
The Social Life of the Car
What actually happens when people drive?
ROLE: Research and design individual contributor
PROJECT TYPE: Ethnographic Study
RESEARCH: Qualitative, Generative
Project Summary
This study was a collaboration between the University of North Texas Fall 2014 Design Anthropology class led by Dr. Christina Wasson and the Nissan Research Center Silicon Valley.
The project was an ethnographic study of how cars are embedded in American culture and an exploration of what actually happens when people drive. The purpose was to generate data of current driver experiences for the developers at Nissan Labs, who were developing driver-less car technology at the time of our study.
Our client contact at Nissan Labs was the legendary consulting anthropologist Dr. Brigitte Jordan who offered insight into our stakeholder’s needs and concerns, as well as guidance in the research process. Our findings were presented to Nissan Labs stakeholders as both a presentation and a written executive report.
Approach
Research work was divided into three main phases. The first phase focused on secondary anthropological research to understand the significance of cars in global vs American culture and gain domain knowledge. The second phase was data collection. The class was split into interdisciplinary research teams of two. Each team conducted a series of applied research activities that included: a pre-driving interview, a driving observation, and a post-driving interview. Everything was recorded on video for later analysis. The final phase of the project was group coding, synthesis, and ideation activities.
Research Questions
• Mapping out the social life of the car, that is, specifying the web of relationships and contexts in which the car is embedded.
• Making driving visible – in parallel to Lucy Suchman’s 1995 concept of “Making Work Visible” – what actually happens when people are driving?
• What do their interactions look like with different aspects of the car, its spaces, technologies, and tools, and other people inside or outside the car?
Project Breakdown
• 9 Interdisciplinary research teams of two
• 4 Months of research and design activities
• 9 Participants
• 18 hrs (approx) collected video data
Final deliverables included a written report, report live presentation with slide deck, and a short video about our research methods.
Group Responsibilities
• Literature review and secondary research
• Research questions
• Interview and observation guides
• Coding and analysis of all collected data
• Synthesis and ideation based on findings
• Design and print final deliverables
Individual Responsibilities
• Participant recruitment via convenience sampling
• 4 Structured individual interviews
• 2 Observational studies
• Video recording
• Coding and analysis of team collected data
• Data visualizations for executive summary
Outcomes
Our study uncovered intriguing ideas about how cars function in people’s lives outside of their obvious utility as transportation. We were then able to ideate on these new ways to “use” cars, creating playful and novel ideas of how passengers in driver-less cars might use the space if they are not occupied with driving activities.
Key Project Takeaways
You can learn a lot by a participant’s posture, facial expressions, and hand gestures - especially when contrasted with the context in which they occur. This project was the first time I was really trained in body language analysis as an observational method and I got totally hooked!