Spaces on Wheels

Spaces on Wheels leverages augmented reality and lush design language to prototype a fleet of fully autonomous vehicles and empower people to explore them in the context of their own lives.

See the videos below and download the app to book your own Space on Wheels and explore it from every angle in augmented reality.

One day, in the not so distant future, fully autonomous vehicles could be a common occurrence on our streets. This would not only change how people and goods move around our cities, but also redefine the very fabric of our daily lives.

The day fully autonomous vehicles hit our streets is the day cars are not cars anymore. The primary function of transportation disappears to give rise to other functions: it will be something different altogether. So, what would we like it to be?

We teamed up with visual lab f°am Studio and designed seven autonomous vehicles as a visual exploration of how fully autonomous vehicles could one day enable a more fulfilling, everyday life.

To bring these designs to life, we created an experience in the SPACE10 app together with design studio Norgram where you can book a Space on Wheels, watch it roll up to your doorstep and then explore it from every angle in AR.

By empowering people to explore self-driving cars in the context of their own lives, we hope to engage more people in the profound paradigm shift the development of self-driving cars could have on our everyday lives.

Design

Our design approach aimed at creating an inclusive and human experience as an antidote to the sterile, chrome-painted vision that tends to dominate the conversation around self-driving cars. That antidote lies in our design language: soft and curved with a pastel colour palette, our Spaces feel soft and approachable—to ensure that everybody feels welcome in the self-driving future.

We also wanted to challenge the traditional idea of the car and developed a modular system that enables these spaces to adapt to our needs and fit into the ebb and flow of our daily lives—to be fluid and customisable.

Bringing The Spaces to Life

But designs on their own aren’t enough to bridge the gap between a speculative future and how people live their daily lives. We needed to bring these cars into the cities, streets and lives that are happening today—which is why we used augmented reality. AR may be a digital tool, but it’s intimately intertwined with a real-life context—which enables us to put ideas into reality, all from the palm of your hand.

Through familiar and intuitive UI that nods to ride-sharing apps of today, you can learn about our available Spaces, book the one you’re in the mood for, track it as it moves towards you and then explore it in AR when it finally arrives.

Office
Flexible Workspace

In congested cities, an average person driving to work spends 75 minutes commuting. About 30 of those minutes are lost to congestion. This means that over 32 years, the driver will have spent two years stuck in traffic.

Office on Wheels, on the other hand, helps people reclaim some of that lost time—whether they want to get a head start on the day’s work to free up time for later or get an early meeting in with colleagues.

Cafe
Coffee On The Go

Studies show that the quality of people’s relationships directly influences how happy they are. But in hectic, urban lives, people often have limited time to socialise; it’s also been found that the older people get, the less time they spend with friends.

Enter Cafe on Wheels—a mobile space which enables people to catch up with a friend over a coffee when they need to keep moving on a busy day.

Healthcare
Mobile Treatment

Transportation difficulties are one of the three major barriers curbing access to healthcare, especially for low-income communities. It’s known as ‘the last mile’ problem: health solutions tend to make it as far as medical outposts—but won’t reach end users.

Healthcare on Wheels solves ‘the last mile’ problem by getting medical professionals to visit people in need, not the other way around.

Farm
Fresh Delivery

Especially for people in low-income communities, difficulty getting to a store or market that sells fresh, healthy food is a significant barrier to local food access.

In contrast, Farm on Wheels brings local food to people wherever they are, all while enabling local farmers to expand their businesses.

Play
AR Joyride

Augmented reality is set to revolutionise the gaming industry and become the next big educational platform. As the technology advances, it’ll increasingly play a role in autonomous vehicles by providing real-time content for the passenger that’s intimately tied to the vehicle’s surroundings.

In Play on Wheels, augmented reality windows enable people to try a new game in AR as they travel, or experience educational content that responds to and reflects their surrounds.

Hotel
Urban Sleepover

More people are traveling than ever before. But air travel raises individual carbon footprints faster and higher than any other activity; in fact, the aviation sector is responsible for an estimated 4.9 percent of all human-made global warming.

In contrast, Hotel on Wheels is an electric vehicle powered by clean energy which contains all the perks of a traditional hotel room. It takes people to their destinations while they’re getting their shut-eye and enables them to reduce their carbon footprints.

Shop
Pop-up Store

While brick and mortar stores enable retailers to connect with many people, some don’t live close enough to retail locations to go there that often. And although online shopping typically lets people buy, it doesn’t really let them shop—which is where Shop on Wheels comes in.

Shop on Wheels will come to people wherever they are—letting them try, buy and explore on their own terms.

Design Rationale

“Google ‘car of the future’ and you’ll get a slew of images straight out of science fiction: sleek, sterile, chrome painted machines. We propose an alternative to this, because we believe that those who imagine the future often end up shaping it.”

— Bas van de Poel, Creative Director at SPACE10

“We envision the future as a conversation. We see it as inclusive and open, but at the same time quite human. The future makes room for you to express your desires—whether you want to run with the pack or be a lone wolf. When visually exploring the future as conversation, it became apparent to us that it had to be approachable and welcoming.

But it had to also really say something. It’s easy to fall back on the usual tropes of formidable, uber-slick and sci-fi driven designs (and in many ways, this is justifiable.) But rather than directly following those aesthetic rules, we asked ourselves: what was the conversation that we wanted to be having?”

— f°am Studio

Indeed, our design approach came down to two words: fluid and human. The self-driving cars of the future should be able to adapt to our needs and fit into the ebb and flow of our daily lives—to be fluid.

To achieve this, we implemented a modular system to enable spatial customisation and all kinds of uses that come with that. This allowed us to be free within our designs—to vary the look, feel and usage depending on the manufacturer’s, designer’s or user’s style and purpose.

As for the human aspect, we envisioned an antidote to the cool, sterile, chrome machines we most often associate with self-driving car development today.

That antidote lies in our design language: soft and curved with a pastel colour palette, our Spaces feel soft and approachable—to ensure that everybody feels welcome in the self-driving future.

Spaces on Wheels is a project by SPACE10, in collaboration with f°am Studio and Norgram.

— Vehicle Design: SPACE10 & f°am Studio
— App Design: Norgram
— App Development: Shape