In the one month long break between the two semester, first thing I decided to do was to step away from my work and actually take some time away from the desk. After a 12 week long research journey and continuous discoveries along the way, it was time to define and re-define goals for this project.

By the end of semester one, I felt like directing my research with all its discoveries towards a specific design area I want to make an impact towards. Currently which was torn between Service Design or Mobility Design.

Due to the nature of my project which involves future mobility combined with public perception towards new technology and its acceptance, I feel like I touched on multiple elements of this ecosystem in which a vehicle exists. Due to Mobility Design being such a holistic field its hard not to touch on elements such as - infrastructure, system design, experience (travel touchpoints), transit network combined with interior/exterior of a vehicle. All these elements needs to work together to provide an efficient transport option.

At this stage I consider it was crucial to navigate all my discoveries and state an overall objective for the project; not yet to be set in stone but written down as a direction which will be refined/altered according to the scope of this project with continuous discoveries. This is because, previously few times in the semester I have been a bit uncertain about 'the depth of information' I need towards for instance transit network, layout of roads, urban plans, applications and service design which make these transport options accessible as to answer where I want my design work to have most of its impact.

As mentioned earlier, stepping away from the project and coming back helped me rethink my project scope and define a direction.

The ‘how might we question’ was updated based on the feedback and reflection of the research progress and according to the discoveries made so far. I consider redefining the 'HMW' question crucial at this point, as after close consideration I realised the depth of research I had towards universal design for this particular project was minimum and if moving ahead with same would be the right decision for this project.

The identified mobility area I would like this project to make an impact in can be simply stated by questioning -

'How' and 'Why' these technologies are deployed within the mobility sector. My present research indicates how most of the development and investment are being done by ride-hailing companies. For instance, Waymo works towards developing and pushing the autonomous technology forward which use a traditional car as base model. "Waymo's mission is to make it safe and easy for people and things to get where they're going." (Waymo,2022) They aim to do the same by targeting ride-hailing and transport service companies which can access their AV technology. Having an AV as a private vehicle is not yet in the picture.

At this point I was thinking not only about the problem which is simply to replace a human driver with a computer while issues like 'deadheading' and 'cold-start' still exist within the ride-hailing business.

Hence, the question was updated to focus more towards the productive application of autonomous technology → Meaning how can these technology benefit the way we travel questioning its efficiency, effectiveness and feasibility for deployment.