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Context & Scoping

Our initial step is to learn as much as possible about over-the-road profession and value proposition of electric APU. We conducted literature review and reached out to our client to gather valuable information.

What is an APU?

Auxiliary Power Unit is a device on the long-haul truck that provides climate control and electrical power to a variety of devices when truck is parked and reduces unnecessary engine idling.

The upcoming regulations bring restraints on APU development

To deal with the issue of inadequate battery capacity during the night, current solution is to use an inbuilt safety feature which turns on the engine and idles the truck. However, truck idling creates lots of pollution and anti-idling laws are becoming prevalent across the U.S.

Driver shortage problem is becoming increasingly serious

Bad living condition, potential health problem and fatal or nonfatal injuries have a deep impact on people’s desire of being a truck driver.

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Problem Space

How might we improve truck drivers’ living and working condition through power-related approach and being regulation compliant?

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Understanding Human Factor Through Research

To uncover drivers’ needs and desires for power usage experience, is to experience it. We chose to conduct interviews with directed storytelling session, run contextual inquiry in order to understand how drivers live in their little cabin, and synthesized 4 pain points.

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Interview & Directed storytelling

We went to several truck stops around Pittsburgh to find drivers to talk to. Since one of our interview challenges was that directly observing drivers’ daily life and behaviors on the road is impossible, we used directed storytelling as a breakthrough to help us get a taste of drivers’ experience with power usage habits. The conversation was led with a story, asked drivers “tell me a story about the last time when you use electrical appliance on your truck…”

Contextual inquiry

We invited drivers to go about their typical activities during non-driving time at truck stop. Our observations and leading questions involved from what they have in trucks, what activities might be conducted that use electricity and how long would that take.

Expert review

Given the resource from the company, we also got chances to approach to experts in the realm of APU manufacturing and logistic industry. We interviewed a truck designer, a fleet owner and an APU dealer to refer to their consideration about driving lifestyle and power usage.

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Synthesize research data into insights, which will be served as design guiding

Comfort: Drivers tend to sleep well as long as the batteries stay charged since the unwanted charging noise and vibration will disturb sleeping.

Confident: Power is insufficient to serve drivers’ personalized AC usage and other energy needs in harsh climate during the night even the APU is fully charged. One of the key abilities of the product should be delivering the required output that boosts drivers’ confidence.

Control: Drivers lack control of the charge cycle and their power usage pattern. They generally have an erratic schedule which interferes with sleep rhythm. They may or may not sleep at regular times and hence predicting when and for how long the max power is required becomes difficult. Even so, drivers want to control truck’s environment throughout the night. They want to be the master of their truck but the current 3-knob HMI fails to empower them to interact with energy usage planning.

Convenience: Drivers want to get easy access to the information of invisible power so that the don’t have to prioritize the usage of appliances. Accordingly, good visibility and automation should be considered in order to provide tangible convenience for power consumption in cabin.

Over-the-road is not just a profession, it’s a lifestyle

“It’s like everything, you get used to it.” Long-haul truck drivers spend weeks to months away from home, sleeping inside small “hotel”. For them, the truck becomes their first home. Their off-time revolves around getting proper sleep, food and nutrition, entertainment and social interaction with family and friends. In order to ensure safety and working efficiency, sleep quality becomes the most urgent consideration.

Here is a story of Anthony’s typical day:

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Opportunity

Maintaining a comfortable sleeping environment in the truck for the desired duration.

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In-Depth Investigation on Driver’s Life and Profession

After first round of user research, we had an inclination to believe that comfort level and power usage pattern vary from driver to driver. With a focus on customization, the in-depth research is to explore how drivers would like to live.

Comfort research

To unfold “comfortable sleeping environment” even broader, we conducted interviews with both drivers and civilians to figure out what does comfort mean to them. Despite it remains somewhat subjective and individual, we identified below universal variables that impede sleep quality in truck:

Noise generated from inside or outside the truck
Vibration generated from the engine
Sweating or chill due to the fluctuation of AC temperature
Irregular sleep pattern due to unfixed schedule in this profession
Unhealthy eating habit disrupts sleep cycle

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Power Requirement Research

Drivers experience a high amount of anxiety in battery level: from deciding using an electrical appliance, to how long should it be kept on. In our opportunity statement, the “desired duration” is highly depending on drivers’ personal preference. In order to specify current and future capacity demands, we sent out energy usage survey to 56 drivers. The survey collected data on both current and ideal usage duration and pattern of electrical appliances. We used these data to build a profile for each driver’s device use. Due to non-disclosure agreement with Thermo King, we are unable to share survey result. But what is clear is:

Bulk of energy goes to heating & air conditioning
Household & electronics are highly individual

Ideation and Iteration

We actionably applied insights gained from research to the design of the opportunity space and kept iterate our ideas through grouping and testing before finalizing the three polished concepts.

Brainstorming & Affinity diagramming

We generated about 60 ideas and affinity diagrammed them into 7 groups according to similarity. As a team, we continued iterating and combining these ideas through rapid prototyping and co-design activity.

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Evaluation

We evaluated our ideas by how well they are addressing the design guides generated from research insights and how well they are working with technological capability. We narrowed down and fleshed out the 3 most promising concepts through scenarios. Then we speed-dated the 3 concepts to truck drivers with storyboards, from where we both identified users’ needs and tested design ideas.

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Introducing TriPac 4C

We followed an iterative design process where we tested usage scenarios and lo-fi prototypes and modified interfaces to achieve intuitiveness. Functional and detailed design will be demonstrating in this section.

Visioning

We created Tripac 4C, an analytics platform that is able to visualize, predict and manage the charge cycle of electrical APU. It bridges the communication between truck drivers and power system, so that drivers’ comfort is optimized with better sleep during the nights, better opportunity for making good food, getting entertainment, connection to family.

How does the prediction work?

The logic on the back-end of the interface is governed by a predictive algorithm. This algorithm works based on historical use and input information so as to predict the battery life.

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Information architecture

The user flow chart shows how user can interact with TriPac 4C system as well as where the data information comes from. Information listed include user tasks step by step, user decision and supported back-end input.

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problemsolvingprocess