It was the summer of 2010, during the first year of my PhD, when I was being examined by the dean of the Design School in her office, in order to progress to the second year. I was one of the newest students, trying to explain my research to the most senior academic in the department. I presented my preliminary research, including a pilot study performed to understand user behaviours and energy use. I had performed a user study with … Read more →
All posts by Luis Carlos Rubino de Oliveira
User observation
This piece was originally produced as part of my contribution to the Contemporary Issues in Ergonomics and Human Factors, a teaching module for the master's program at the School of Psychology, University of Derby. It was produced alongside a podcast to foster discussions with students during workshops and lectures
A few years ago I was hired as the user experience researcher to work for the CLoSeR project, which proposed a new technology for the rail industry in the UK. … Read more →
Driving style – How should an automated vehicle behave?
This piece was originally produced as part of my contribution to the Contemporary Issues in Ergonomics and Human Factors, a teaching module for the master's program at the School of Psychology, University of Derby. It was produced alongside a podcast to foster discussions with students during workshops and lectures
The driving style of automated vehicles is becoming an important factor for the automotive industry. It involves aspects such as the rate of acceleration and braking, the trajectory on bends, … Read more →
Advanced UX interview techniques
One of the oldest and most frequently used methods to understand users, their needs, attitudes and behaviours is the interview. After you developed a questionnaire, you can use it verbatim and you will get consistent and structured answers. You can also use a semi-structured questionnaire, where you have the basic questions, but have the freedom to explore each previous answer with new questions that you create at the spot. You may have some negative consequences such as more time to … Read more →
WiCET in the news
The WiCET project was featured on BBC News, when the researchers demonstrated the wireless charger to the TV crew. This technology was developed following the feasibility study that I contributed to. The video can be seen on LinkedIn here.… Read more →
Employee Experience (EX)
Recently, companies are paying more attention to the experience of their workforce. As the name suggests, employee experience (EX) concerns the study of the quality of experiences during work, as perceived by employees. EX is sometimes referred as enterprise UX, which is the design of products for people at work. It includes any software, device or interface that help workers perform their job. From the moment they apply for a job, to the day-to-day activities up to the point they … Read more →
A new system for the rail industry
I present here a case study of the CloseR Project, with which I was involved for over two years. It received 1.2m funding from Innovate UK and the Rail Safety and Standards Board.… Read more →
Wireless charging of electric taxis
I was working for a project developing innovative charging facilities to solve the shortage of charging stations for electric taxis. Partners included Transport for London (TfL), Nottingham City Council (NCC) and Shell.… Read more →
Usability studies
I’ve been performing usability studies for different projects to evaluate products and services in diverse technology readiness levels. Below I give some examples of recent work performed where I applied UX, user-centred design and ergonomics research to understand how people interact with the systems in question.
Internal vehicle HMI
As part of the UK Autodrive project, partners Jaguar Land Rover and RDM/Aurrigo wanted to understand the interaction between occupants of automated vehicles and four types of interfaces. So our team … Read more →
Automated vehicles
When I was working for the UK Autodrive project I was invited to take pictures of the automated vehicles using during this research. Examples above show my pictures of the vehicles inside the simulator and also within real-world test settings.
These vehicles are short range, low speed highly automated ‘pods’, manufactured by Aurrigo / RDM. They are designed to provide transportation on the first and last miles of journeys, e.g. from a train station to a town centre, or from … Read more →