Empathic Futures Study —
Connecting people and conversational agents in a formative design study

For: Volkswagen
With: FELD studio

»Empathic Futures« was a design research collaboration between my former design studio FELD and Volkswagen Group Future Cente Europe. The user study explored conversational agents focusing on future mobility services involving 500 participants using a wizard-of-oz system. The study offered anyone interested to chat with their so-called "Empathic Intelligence" – a personal, mobility-related virtual agent within a mobile app over several days. Through text conversations, the participants from all over Europe were accompanied by their personal chat agent throughout their everyday.

The study explored different preferences, use cases, and expectations that users have in using a personal virtual assistant in the context of future intermodal mobility services.