Lead Communication Manager Esther Barra recently spoke with Dr.-Ing. Lukas Flohr (Senior UX Designer & Specialist Mobility) about research projects at Ergosign and earning a doctoral degree while working in an industrial setting. What all of this has to do with autonomous vehicles, context-based prototyping, and Lukas' career path, you can read up below:
Esther: Lukas, how did you actually come to Ergosign?
Lukas: During my studies in Digital Media, I encountered Ergosign through guest lectures and workshops. I found UX super interesting, and Ergosign's lived human-centered approach felt right. At the end of my bachelor's studies, I applied for an internship with a subsequent thesis at the Hamburg office. That was a welcome change after the rather tranquil town of Furtwangen in the Black Forest. After my bachelor's thesis on the application of Augmented Reality in the context of Industry 4.0, I returned to university — specifically to the Technical University of Munich (TUM), where I enrolled in a master's program in Human Factors Engineering. The great thing was that I could stay at Ergosign and seamlessly continue as a working student in the Munich office, where I supported project teams in UX design and research activities.
Esther: When did you discover your interest in the Mobility sector?
Lukas: I think my master's studies played a decisive role. Fortunately, at TUM, there were many exciting lectures, seminars, and projects on (vehicle) automation, mobility, and ergonomics — exactly my thing, as it turned out.
Esther: What's so fascinating about cars?
Lukas: Actually, I don't find cars, or motorized individual transport in general that cool. It's comfortable but often inefficient and far from environmentally friendly. Mobility is still a great topic though. It allows us to increase our range of movement and participate in societal and social life. I am particularly interested in "Shared Mobility" concepts combined with autonomous vehicles. These innovative technologies have enormous economic, ecological, and social potential. They can enable flexible, safe, and self-determined travel for people who, for various reasons, are unable to drive themselves. This quickly leads us to the keywords sustainability and future viability. Today's cars are highly technological machines that spend the majority of their lifecycle unused. Parked by the roadside, they block public space, which is scarce and valuable, especially in urban areas. Well-coordinated Shared Mobility concepts require significantly fewer vehicles to meet the same mobility demand. These vehicles would ideally be in almost constant use, making this approach more efficient and sustainable than individual motorized transport.
Esther: Which research projects at Ergosign have you been involved in so far?
Lukas: My first research project, which also set the rough framework for my dissertation, was APEROL (Autonomous Personalized Organization of Road Traffic and Digital Logistics). With APEROL, we focused on the holistic and human-centered design of Autonomous Mobility-on-Demand (AMoD) systems, their development, and evaluation. The idea behind the project was to develop a concept for a fleet of autonomously driving, shared vehicles as part of public transportation for a city like Aachen. We specifically dealt with the development of user interfaces for the required mobility service. The research project was completed in April 2021. Subsequently, we developed related topics at Ergosign and conducted a follow-up study with a "Wizard-of-Oz" setup.
The experiences from APEROL and our own research in this field allowed us to become consortium partners in the STADT:up research project (Solutions and Technologies for Automated Driving in Town: an Urban Mobility Project). With a total of 22 partners, this project, funded by the BMWK, on automated driving in urban areas is even larger than APEROL. At Ergosign, we are primarily concerned with interaction concepts to explain automation behavior in complex inner-city traffic situations.
Esther: How did you choose the topic for your dissertation?
Lukas: This was certainly a process, initially I thought my dissertation would be rather close to the project outline of APEROL. However, when it became clear that the originally planned testing of the developed concepts with real automated vehicles could not take place as planned, we focused more on prototyping methods. In line with our human-centered approach, we wanted to evaluate the user interfaces we developed early on — such as in usability tests — to ensure that our concepts actually meet the requirements of users and stakeholders. A central challenge was to consider the dynamic context of driverless driving during testing appropriately. We assumed that both the physical and social context of a (shared) driverless journey would have a significant impact on the evaluation of our designs. Therefore, we intensively dealt with context-based prototyping and cost-effectively set up our own set-ups that allowed meaningful studies. This included, for example, the video-based driving simulator or our Wizard-of-Oz vehicle. This ultimately led to the choice of the topic for my dissertation: "Context-Based Prototyping of Human-Machine Interfaces for Autonomous Vehicles."
Esther: What was your daily work like during the dissertation, and how did Ergosign support you?
Lukas: During the dissertation, I had an exciting mix of client and research projects. Writing publications and the dissertation naturally took up a considerable amount of free time and private investment, so quite a few evenings, free days, and weekends were dedicated to the dissertation.
As for support: I had several great mentors at Ergosign who gave me a high degree of responsibility, freedom, and trust, such as my team leaders Stefan Schulz and Stefan Kiefer. Especially Sebastian C. Scholz and Professor Dr. Dieter Wallach supported me greatly during the active phase of the dissertation. Dieter had the administrative leadership in APEROL, while I took on the technical leadership. Dieter also supported me in finding a supervisor and introduced me to my doctoral advisor Professor Dr. Antonio Krüger from DFKI. Towards the end of the dissertation period, Ergosign granted me a month of special leave to fully concentrate on writing my dissertation. In addition, I was able to present our research results at exciting conferences and conferences, such as the ACM Designing Interactive Systems (DIS) Conference in Pittsburgh in the summer of 2023.
Esther: A doctorate in a company like Ergosign is rather unusual; why do you think it's a good fit?
Lukas: A doctorate creates a strong intrinsically motivated involvement (in research projects) and many contacts with companies of various sizes, as well as renowned research institutions and universities. Through one's own research, methods can be explored, and set-ups can be built and tested, which can later be used in an industrial environment. Finally, supporting doctoral projects provides the opportunity to promote and motivate research-affine employees. We continue this opportunity for a mix of industry and (academic) research at Ergosign: In addition to STADT:up, we are involved in the Readi project as the consortium leader. Readi is a strategic research project that focuses on researching methods to strengthen the resilience of companies — insights from this flow into our Organizational Design service and enrich the methods arsenal used in customer projects.
Esther: What advice would you give to students considering a career in the UX and Mobility field?
Lukas: Phew, a blanket answer is rather difficult here. In UX in general, as well as in a project like a dissertation, one's own motivation and a certain passion are important when it comes to a long-term engagement with complex topics. In short, having an intrinsic interest in staying in the game, following trends, and keeping oneself up-to-date is more than helpful. Having a solid knowledge and understanding of methods is as important as having an informed but pragmatic attitude towards its targeted application. Moreover, collaboration with colleagues, customers, users, and other stakeholders is central to successful projects. From a methodological perspective, I can highly recommend the book "Collaborative UX Design" by Toni and Dieter to anyone who wants to enter the UX field — or is already working there.
