TH E SYAH IM M AG
T H E V E H I C L E - DW E L L I N G NOMAD USER ANALYSIS
DEFINING USER NEEDS Through the growth of Vanlife and RV Living social media accounts and channels, one can quantify the publics’ fascination and longing for this nomadic lifestyle. People following these accounts are the checkout clerk at the local supermarket, the receptionist at the dentist’s office, and the next-door neighbor. These people are dreaming of rather attainable lives; however, the underserved needs of those living on the road are the reason for hesitation. In order to identify these needs, the project introduces two users as a means of representing a subsect of the nomadic population: Katie Carney & Novel Kulture. These users' stories are detailed on the following pages. While these two users are only a fraction of the broad nomadic community, they are representative of many common ideals shared by a diverse group of vehicle dwellers.
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METHODOLOGY In order to better understand the users’ needs, I watched Youtube videos from each of the users to piece together their life story. In doing so, I watched hundreds of videos spanning across years of the users lives and was able to determine their approximate locations, frequency of their movement, fluctuations in their health (physical and mental), as well as their financial position. Other
social media platforms were used to fill time gaps including Facebook and Instagram. These user case studies provided valuable insight as to how the typical vehicle-dwelling nomad’s life fluctuates on the road over long periods of time, and the underlying motivations for living this alternative lifestyle. Overall, this process assisted in unearthing the value system of this emergent culture and the underserved needs of the community. Moreover, to better understand the daily hurdles and practices that comes with living in a vehicle, I renovated a cargo van and spent six weeks in the summer of 2020 traveling throughout the American West. This exercise assisted in understanding privacy, spatial and safety concerns, while also providing valuable insight into the logistics of frequent home relocation and parking restrictions. Together, these research techniques assisted in painting a comprehensive picture of life on the road for the modern American, vehicle-dwelling nomad. The research derived from such activities created the foundation for the applied project, which focused on a user-centered design process. Therefore, the users’ needs took precedence over all other design considerations.
