Adventure Mode: A Speculative Rideshare Design

Abstract

Most smart city projections presume efficiency, predictability, and control as core design principles for smart transportation. Adventure Mode is a speculative design proposal developed as part of a research project with a major automotive company that proposes uses and interactions for Autonomous Vehicles (AVs) and rideshare advancements that defy these normative presumptions. Adventure Mode reframes the focus of moving vehicles from destination-based experiences to journey-based ones. Adventure Mode pushes the probabilities for unexpected encounters and anonymous play in increasingly predictable and predicted urban environments. It embraces the submission to algorithmic decision and chance as a ludic modality in human-computer interactions and urban artificial intelligence.