Deriving Personas to Inform HMI Design for Future Autonomous Taxis: A Case Study on User Requirement Elicitation

Automated Vehicle Mobility-as-a-Service (AV MaaS)-or autonomous taxis-are expected to offer an inexpensive, mobility-on-demand service supporting greater sustainable transportation systems, including "last mile " solutions. However, to date, little is understood about how different people, whose needs and requirements may vary considerably, will best be supported to use these vehicles when there is no human driver/operative present to mediate or support them. Aiming to capture users' experiences from existing taxi services and apply these in the context of an AV MaaS, we conducted a series of interviews with 35 taxi users, with different usability/accessibility needs. This was enriched by relevant literature. The information gathered from both activities informed the creation of eight unique "personas, " illustrating potential end users of the service, and thirteen unique "scenarios, " depicting and encompassing current taxi usage. The personas and scenarios were subsequently used to highlight potential human-machine interface (HMI) issues that need to be considered for a driverless mobility service, which then informed the development of key user requirements for HMI design and service type models. Specific user requirements were elicited and categorized using a requirements template. This paper presents an overview of personas and scenarios, and the process by which they were derived, and provides a case study of how key user requirements and service types were subsequently elicited from these persona-scenarios. The work is important to ensure that AV MaaSs successfully meet the as-yet unknown needs of end users and offer usability for all.