Mobility futures: Silta

Environments | Client | Collaboration

Pittsburgh is a growing city. With the increase in students as well young working professionals coming into the city, Pittsburgh is estimated to become one of the largest cities in the U.S.
However, with this influx of individuals, there is also a divide that is created amongst the old and the new. Gentrification occurs in many of Pittsburgh’s neighborhoods such as East Liberty. Miscommunication occurs and social divides begin.

We propose a system of autonomous mobile vehicles that will transform into modular event venues using the Miura origami fold methodology that can be arranged to fit the space needed and purpose of the event.

Role & Contribution
I worked on leading user research, ideation, prototyping, asset creation, and editing the final video.

Deliverables 
Final Video

Process

Preliminary Secondary Research + Empathy interview

We began our research by doing literature review, trying to understand the domain of mobility and trends in future mobility. We also wanted to understand Bridgestone’s competence and focus areas. Their big 7 areas of focus were AI & Big Data, Connected Service, Autonomous Vehicle, Alternative Energy Vehicles, Smart Material, IoT (Internet of Things), and Share Economy.

From our research, our insights for focus were:

• Material innovation

• Mobility solutions

• From product to service

Furthermore, we wanted to keep our design solution in the context of one location as a MVP. OnePGH is the strategy for Pittsburgh to thrive in the 21st century as a city of engaged, empowered and coordinated neighbors. In the development vision of the city, resilience, sustainability and inclusivity of communities are fueling our mobility innovation. We wanted to design a system that will provide as a new form of transportation in a future where urbanization is increasing and leading to social conflicts as a result.

We wanted to:

• Utilize existing infrastructure 

• Encourage Newcomers to explore the city

• Blend the divide between old and newcomers

• Align values with OnePGH + Bridgestone

As we further investigated into regional development of Pittsburgh, marginalization and inequity revealed as significant issues of the city.

After literature reviews, we interviewed 14 local residents in Pittsburgh, three from downtown, two from Shadyside, five from East Liberty, two from Southside and two from Monroeville. We tried to uncover how people travel in Pittsburgh, and what areas we should focus on.

Some key quotes:

“I don’t go to some places in Pittsburgh because there’s no bus.”
”There’s a lot of reasons to explore Pittsburgh, only if you have a car”
”There’s hardly any public transportation here. We share rides when going downtown.”

We were motivated by the curiosity of understanding the different neighborhoods in Pittsburgh, and how people and communities can be connected through emerging technologies in mobility.

We wanted to answer the following questions:

• How might we utilize existing infrastructure?

  • Individuals find there to be a barrier between exploring new places in Pittsburgh without the convenience of a personal vehicle. GPS navigation is also a challenge to those driving a personal vehicle.

• How might we encourage newcomers to explore the city?

  • Pittsburgh is a city rooted in its history and culture. Each neighborhood highlights a different aspect to the city, bringing value to the overall experience of this place.

• How might we blend the divide between a newcomer
and the neighborhoods of Pittsburgh?

  • As urbanization increases in the city, areas of lower traffic suffer from the change leading to a bigger gap between the rich and the lower income.

• How might we align with onePGH + Bridgestone?

  • Pittsburgh's vision for the future entails resilience and sustainability, and they are the city's personal goals for near and far future.

Research Method: Empathy interview + Diary Study

Now that we targeted our focus on bridging “the old” and “the new” of Pittsburgh, we planned to do further interviews with newcomers and local residents to understand their life, thoughts, and concerns in order to identify their core demands.

We designed an interactive booklet that was conducted in person and retrieved later with the following questions:

For newcomers

• Draw a map of Pittsburgh

• Draw a map of the city

• Where did you live before?

• What does your average work day look like?

• What does your average weekend look like?

• How do you normally travel in Pittsburgh?

• How do you affect your neighborhood?

• Draw your journey as newcomer to Pittsburgh

• For one week, log where did you go in Pittsburgh, how did you get there, and why did you go?

We conducted the studies with 8 locals and 10 newcomers.

Insights:

• Exploring & Belonging

• Breadcrumbs (leaving your mark)

• Visit a place (what gets them back/ triggers)

• Walkable connections

• Meetup

Research Method: Interactive Poster

In order to get to a wider range of stakeholders, we also conducted an open-space user study with an interactive poster to see how people go out in Pittsburgh.
We put it in 5 different locations: the lobby of Cohort University Center in CMU (an area with highest foot traffic on campus), the intersection of Forbes and Murray in Squirrel Hill, Schenley Plaza (a community space in Oakland), the Waterfront, and at a small park in Hazelwood.

We asked the follow questions:

• Where do you live? Work? Frequently hang out? Want to explore?

• What stops you from exploring Pittsburgh?

Participants indicated with stickers on black foam core about where they lived, worked, hung out, and desired to explore. The second question of what stops you from exploring was answered on a sticky note that was then put on an area on the same foam core. With the sticky notes, we conducted an affinity diagram and concluded with four major insights.

Insights:

• People have inclination to go out in their spare time.

• They prefer to go out with people close to them.

• Their main motivations are food and entertainment.

• Their experiences are impeded by time & schedule, transportation constraints, and budget.

Pivot: REFINING the problem space

Initially, we set our mission statement to bridge the gap between different communities in Pittsburgh. However, we realized that the scope is too big and broad. We went back to our research findings, and redefine our mission statement to something that is more human-centered:

We want to expand newcomers’ social and physical radii by designing a system that will facilitate their connection to communities.

IDEATION

In order to solve the problem we identified from user research, we brainstormed multiple ideas using tools such as Stuart Candy’s, “The Thing from the Future” exercise. These ideas include a digital solution called “Pittsburgh Passport”, an individual vehicle that can be assembled into groups, etc.

After reviewing our designs, we realized that, though the concepts are interesting, our designs lack innovation and it wouldn’t solve the problem we identified. Inspired by feedback from Prof. Chung and Bridgestone, we altered our perspective and changed our goal from “motivating and bringing people to places” to “bringing experiences to people”.
We ideated the final solution to be a vehicle that will operate in a way similar to food trucks and bring experiences from one neighborhood to another.

Brainstorming + Storyboarding +Prototyping

We drew sketches of our visions of vehicles individually, then selected highlights of our ideas to come up with a combined design. We then drew storyboards to see how these vehicles can be useful in different scenarios.

Feedback from Bridgestone:

They had a positive reaction to the design, but challenged us to consider the value that Bridgestone could provide. They also talked about the opportunity areas Bridgestone would have in this design, with examples such as shock-resistant walls, smart materials, and wheels with sensors.

To evaluate whether this design will be successful or not, we conducted a value analysis, and came to the conclusion that Silta is promising as it creates values for various stakeholders.

Value for Individuals:

• Frees people from time and transportation constraints

• Provides more exposure to cultural diversity

• Brings new experience to familiar space

Value for Businesses:

• Helps commercial branding & promotion by increasing public exposure

• Facilitates market investigation and evaluation

• Expands business radii and brings more revenue

Value for Society:

• Reconstructs local network by sparking conversations and deepening understandings

• Improve social equity by sharing infrastructure and public services

• Other cities can use Pittsburgh as a model

For Bridgestone, we saw promising opportunities as well. New R&D (research and development) can be done to develop omni wheels that travels in all directions, and new material which will be shock-resistant and also have flexibility in terms of rigidity. They would also gain benefits from implementing autonomous driving. In addition, Bridgestone increases its reputation for fulfilling its social responsibility by creating these community spaces and facilitates social interactions and conversations among people.

We proposed a system of autonomous mobile vehicles that will transform into modular event venues using the Miura origami fold methodology that can be arranged to fit the space needed and purpose of the event.

Technical Design

For the technical designs of the car, aside from miura folding, we also designed the material used to build Silta units to be shock resistant, which ensures the safety of the units both when they are traveling and when they are unfolded and forming structures. Another feature of the materials is that they have controllable stiffness. This is because the walls/floors need to be flexible to be folded in the miura form, but also need to be rigid when in the expanded form to support people and other heavy weight items that are going to be in the spaces they created.
Luckily, there are numerous studies already around such kind of material. From a review paper on material’s controllable flexibility, we looked at all of the materials that have been invented and their relative flexibility in terms of rigidity (represented by the length of range along the y-axis in this graph).
One specific kind of materials utilizing “jamming techniques” caught our attention. These materials contain particles or sheets inside them. Upon forces, their contacting surfaces increases, which increases frictions and interactions, thus increasing rigidity. We believed this would be a promising material for Bridgestone to look into.
Autonomous driving is also implemented in these units, ensuring efficient transportation.In this way, human focus can be honed towards enhancing event experience over travel logistics.
The wheels are also engineered in a way that enables them to travel in all directions without turning. These wheels are called omni wheels and have sub-wheels that enables alternative traveling directions. This ensures an accurate and efficient assembly of the units.

Prototyping

We decided that the size of the vehicles will be similar to that of contemporary buses so that they can fit infrastructure. After finalizing the dimension to be 9ft(W) by 18ft(L) by 10.5ft(H), we used paper to make lo-fi models of such vehicles. Inspired by miura origami folding, we also designed and prototyped foldable walls, a new feature that will significantly increase area of space the vehicles create.

These paper prototypes enabled us to think about how the vehicles will unfold and combine in dynamic ways. We used laser cutting to cut foam boards and glued them to make mid-fi prototypes for the video. New miura prototype was also made using translucent paper, a material that mimics the ideal material for the vehicle roofs, which will allow partial sunlight passage into the spaces that the vehicles created.

We used Cinema 4D to create 3D prototypes of the Silta units and also animations of them driving, unfolding, expanding, and attaching, and closing. Using Vectary, we also created mock-ups of how people will interact within the spaces Silta creates in real life.

For the final video prototype, we first created a storyboard, imagining how we are going to tell the story while presenting opportunity areas for Bridgestone at the same time. Based off the storyboard, we wrote the script for voice-over of the video. We decided to used paper models to create a stop-motion video.

Final