Sensory Input Testing

Working on the Reardar project managed to spawn a related project; the question we kept coming back to was "What is the best way to notify a cyclist"? We brainstormed all the methods that we could think of, built some quicky prototypes (different methods of visual, haptic, and audio inputs), and took to the streets of Seattle with several brave co-workers/test-subjects to down-select the options. ARTICLE LINK

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• The next segment of testing pitted the down-selected inputs against each other across a sampling of notification-types we imagined a cyclist might want, such as "your next turn is a right", "there's someone coming up fast behind you", or "you just received a text message". We chose to test in VR for two reasons; a) to test scenarios that would be dangerous/prohibitively-expensive to test in the real world and b) to allow for many test participants to go through the large test matrix quickly

Interfacing between the real-world and the virtual-world took a bit of work, but made for a richer, more immersive test. Needless to say, it's fun to ride a bike that responds to your real-world pedaling cadence and handlebar movements in VR! There were a few clear winners in the end, but I'll save the details for the write-up. ARTICLE IN-WORK