We are officially inventors!
The question was this: what does a driver say to a cyclist?
The horn is what's available. But a horn communicates the wrong thing.
It says: I am behind you, move. It does not say: I see you, I am here, we are here together.
The road is a shared space. The vocabulary of the road shapes the relationships between the people using it. We have been using a horn — designed for a different era, carrying the social grammar of a private vehicle asserting priority — to have a conversation that requires something more civil.
Ring My Bell gives the car a bicycle bell. In the specific context of approaching a cyclist, a connected vehicle triggers a familiar sound from a different world — the world of cyclists acknowledging each other, of courteous negotiation in shared space.
One sound. A completely different social meaning.
**US Patent No. 11189173** — Systems and Methods for Providing Proximity Alerts Between Vehicles and Personal Transportation Devices.
Issued November 30, 2021.
No moment is too small. The bell is three seconds of audio. The argument it makes is not small: the road could be more civil than it is.
The technology to make it so already exists.
Excited to share that one of k_o studio experience designs developed in collaboration with Ford Product Development, Enterprise Connectivity Research team, was granted US Patent.
As Experience Designers our role is to investigate how technology makes room for the new, compelling human experiences, that have the ability to differentiate what otherwise would often be a conventional function.
Design is a conversation with a situation at hand. During this conversation we ask different questions.
Questions like: What if connected vehicle as adaptive entity in techno-social situations could actively support mobility as social practice informed by shared values, like courtesy and benevolent collaboration?