Beacon
Beacon
Designing the first accessible onboarding system for blind and low-vision riders in autonomous vehicles
How blind riders locate, board, and trust driverless cars on their own
Best UX Design & Research capstone (1 of 150 teams) · CCAT finalist · Campus of the Future semifinalist
Beacon
Designing the first accessible onboarding system for blind and low-vision riders in autonomous vehicles
How blind riders locate, board, and trust driverless cars on their own
Best UX Design & Research capstone (1 of 150 teams) · CCAT finalist · Campus of the Future semifinalist
Beacon
Designing the first accessible onboarding system for blind and low-vision riders in autonomous vehicles
How blind riders locate, board, and trust driverless cars on their own
Best UX Design & Research capstone (1 of 150 teams) · CCAT finalist · Campus of the Future semifinalist
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Company
Company
University of Michigan Capstone Project + UofM Transportation Research Institute
University of Michigan Capstone Project + UofM Transportation Research Institute
Collaborators
Collaborators
Team of 5, advised by faculty in accessibility, haptics, and spatial computing
Team of 5, advised by faculty in accessibility, haptics, and spatial computing
Timeline
Timeline
Winter 2026 (12 weeks)
Winter 2026 (12 weeks)
Individual Contributions
Individual Contributions
Field research · Design system · Interaction design. Co-led usability tests · Product Management
Field research · Design system · Interaction design. Co-led usability tests · Product Management
Role
Role
Product Designer & Manager
Product Designer & Manager
Team Efforts
Team Efforts
Competitive analysis · Strategic research · Stakeholder alignment
Competitive analysis · Strategic research · Stakeholder alignment
Overview
Autonomous vehicles could become one of the most independence-changing technologies for blind and low-vision (BLV) riders.
Autonomous vehicles could become one of the most independence-changing technologies for blind and low-vision (BLV) riders.
Research shows that 88% of blind people believe AVs will transform their independence, and yet the services available today offer almost no accessible way to begin a ride. You can book the car, but after that you are on your own to locate a vehicle on a busy street, get in without a driver to ask, and trust a machine you cannot see to start moving.
Research shows that 88% of blind people believe AVs will transform their independence, and yet the services available today offer almost no accessible way to begin a ride. You can book the car, but after that you are on your own to locate a vehicle on a busy street, get in without a driver to ask, and trust a machine you cannot see to start moving.
Over twelve weeks, our team took a fuzzy space and turned it into something concrete: a scoped problem, a research-backed point of view, and two onboarding concepts, one for finding the vehicle and one for boarding it.
Over twelve weeks, our team took a fuzzy space and turned it into something concrete: a scoped problem, a research-backed point of view, and two onboarding concepts, one for finding the vehicle and one for boarding it.
Fuzzy Problem
Where do accessibility and vehicles break down?
Where do accessibility and vehicles break down?
We began with a different prompt, deaf drivers at traffic stops, but limited participant access and partner constraints narrowed our scope. Rather than force a question we couldn't research well, we stepped back and asked a broader one: where do accessibility and vehicles break down?
Consulting UMTRI, an engineer at GM, and mobility-innovation experts, I found that the physical layer, like ramps and modified doors, is already well researched. The less obvious gap was perception. Autonomous vehicles remove the driver, who is usually the person a rider counts on to confirm the car is theirs and safe to enter, so asking who loses the most when those cues disappear led us to blind and low-vision riders.
We began with a different prompt, deaf drivers at traffic stops, but limited participant access and partner constraints narrowed our scope. Rather than force a question we couldn't research well, we stepped back and asked a broader one: where do accessibility and vehicles break down?
Consulting UMTRI, an engineer at GM, and mobility-innovation experts, I found that the physical layer, like ramps and modified doors, is already well researched. The less obvious gap was perception. Autonomous vehicles remove the driver, who is usually the person a rider counts on to confirm the car is theirs and safe to enter, so asking who loses the most when those cues disappear led us to blind and low-vision riders.
A service can be fair without being usable, and that was a gap that was easy to miss because no one was measuring it
A service can be fair without being usable, and that was a gap that was easy to miss because no one was measuring it
Lorem ispum — explain this competitive audit more
Lorem ispum — explain this competitive audit more
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Research
Expert, Rider, and Real-World Perspectives
Expert, Rider, and Real-World Perspectives
We built our understanding from three directions at once.
We built our understanding from three directions at once.
I interviewed leading researchers at the intersection of blindness and mobility, several of whom are part of the BLV community they research.
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I ran user interviews with BLV riders. Where the researchers brought expertise, Sam and Andrea brought the unfiltered reality of being a rider.
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I ran a field test in San Francisco, riding Waymo as a simulated novice BLV rider.
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Findings
Hardest moment is the last few feet
Hardest moment is the last few feet
Five insights reframed the project:
Five insights reframed the project:
When things started to become less fuzzy
Closing the Perception Gap
Closing the Perception Gap
Driverless services like Waymo or May Mobility focus on their work that lives inside the ride. When speaking with riders and researchers, the hardest part of the trip was before the trip even begins.
Driverless services like Waymo or May Mobility focus on their work that lives inside the ride. When speaking with riders and researchers, the hardest part of the trip was before the trip even begins.
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From research to design
I translated the research into a set of goals for me to design within them
I translated the research into a set of goals for me to design within them
Those findings hardened into the rules every concept should follow
Those findings hardened into the rules every concept should follow
Crucially, our interviewees reminded us to design for the whole technology spectrum as much of the BLV community is elderly or on older hardware. Therefore, the baseline had to work on a basic phone (haptics + gyroscope), with the Apple Watch as an enhancement, not a requirement.
Crucially, our interviewees reminded us to design for the whole technology spectrum as much of the BLV community is elderly or on older hardware. Therefore, the baseline had to work on a basic phone (haptics + gyroscope), with the Apple Watch as an enhancement, not a requirement.
The concepts
Two flows that carry the rider from a stopped car to a moving one without needing their eyes or a free hand.
Two flows that carry the rider from a stopped car to a moving one without needing their eyes or a free hand.
Validation
I set explicit success criteria across trust, task completion, comprehension, independence, and satisfaction
Reflection
Rigor is empathy
Both blind researchers we spoke to warned us, in different words, that a sighted person in a blindfold is not a blind rider with different mental models, residual vision, and a fundamentally different relationship to risk. That reframed how I worked. The most valuable design decisions in this project came from listening closely enough that the riders' constraints became brief.
Designing for a sensory experience I don't have taught me to treat research not as a box to check but as the only honest path to a good answer and to build systems that admit what they don't know, like GPS that's off by 20 feet.
The designer is never the user. In accessibility, that gap is the whole problem, so I closed it with rigor instead of pretending to bridge it with empathy. This project turned a space no one on the team had lived in into a scoped problem, a clear point of view, and two testable concepts by letting the people who live in it lead.
Reflection
Rigor is empathy
Both blind researchers we spoke to warned us, in different words, that a sighted person in a blindfold is not a blind rider with different mental models, residual vision, and a fundamentally different relationship to risk. That reframed how I worked. The most valuable design decisions in this project came from listening closely enough that the riders' constraints became brief.
Designing for a sensory experience I don't have taught me to treat research not as a box to check but as the only honest path to a good answer and to build systems that admit what they don't know, like GPS that's off by 20 feet.
The designer is never the user. In accessibility, that gap is the whole problem, so I closed it with rigor instead of pretending to bridge it with empathy. This project turned a space no one on the team had lived in into a scoped problem, a clear point of view, and two testable concepts by letting the people who live in it lead.
Reflection
Rigor is empathy
Both blind researchers we spoke to warned us, in different words, that a sighted person in a blindfold is not a blind rider with different mental models, residual vision, and a fundamentally different relationship to risk. That reframed how I worked. The most valuable design decisions in this project came from listening closely enough that the riders' constraints became brief.
Designing for a sensory experience I don't have taught me to treat research not as a box to check but as the only honest path to a good answer and to build systems that admit what they don't know, like GPS that's off by 20 feet.
The designer is never the user. In accessibility, that gap is the whole problem, so I closed it with rigor instead of pretending to bridge it with empathy. This project turned a space no one on the team had lived in into a scoped problem, a clear point of view, and two testable concepts by letting the people who live in it lead.
Reflection
Rigor is empathy
Both blind researchers we spoke to warned us, in different words, that a sighted person in a blindfold is not a blind rider with different mental models, residual vision, and a fundamentally different relationship to risk. That reframed how I worked. The most valuable design decisions in this project came from listening closely enough that the riders' constraints became brief.
Designing for a sensory experience I don't have taught me to treat research not as a box to check but as the only honest path to a good answer and to build systems that admit what they don't know, like GPS that's off by 20 feet.
The designer is never the user. In accessibility, that gap is the whole problem, so I closed it with rigor instead of pretending to bridge it with empathy. This project turned a space no one on the team had lived in into a scoped problem, a clear point of view, and two testable concepts by letting the people who live in it lead.
Reflection
Rigor is empathy
Both blind researchers we spoke to warned us, in different words, that a sighted person in a blindfold is not a blind rider with different mental models, residual vision, and a fundamentally different relationship to risk. That reframed how I worked. The most valuable design decisions in this project came from listening closely enough that the riders' constraints became brief.
Designing for a sensory experience I don't have taught me to treat research not as a box to check but as the only honest path to a good answer and to build systems that admit what they don't know, like GPS that's off by 20 feet.
The designer is never the user. In accessibility, that gap is the whole problem, so I closed it with rigor instead of pretending to bridge it with empathy. This project turned a space no one on the team had lived in into a scoped problem, a clear point of view, and two testable concepts by letting the people who live in it lead.