USER ANALYSIS

THE SYAHIM MAG

THE VEHICLE-DWELLING NOMAD

USER ANALYSIS

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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.

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.

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KATIE CARNEY

THE SOLO TRAVELER

Katie Carney purchased her first vehicle, a Toyota Yaris, when she was 24 years old, and she has always had a passion for being on the road. Her first time sleeping in her car was on a road trip from Nashville to New York, and she pulled over at a truck stop for the night saving herself $75 in hotel charges, so she just continued to do it. Her first experience living in her car was involuntary when she was 26. She found herself with nowhere to stay and no funds to rent an apartment when she was living in Portland, OR. She started her YouTube channel at this time to provide a resource and general humor to those living under similar circumstances.

By the Fall of 2019, Katie had lived in her car part time for four years and full time for three years. She graduated with a college degree in 2008 with a degree in social science and a minor in special education, but her work since graduation has primarily consisted of editing, copywriting, and transcribing. For large periods of time, she has help full-time remote positions in customer service for online entrepreneurs, and in her younger years, she worked receptionist and service jobs in the cities she travelled to. Today, she has a large YouTube following where she can monetize the channel through product reviews and paid advertising, and she has hinted at authoring a book in the near future. She currently has over 208K followers on YouTube.

Katie does not stress financial reasons as her primary reason for living in her car. She has a deep desire to be on the road and moving between spaces. She will travel to Austin for a few weeks, then Nashville for a month, then visit her parents for a month, then head to Bozeman. She returns to places where she has friends and family, church connections, and just a deep love of place. She enjoys being in her car and will complete her 8-hour workdays behind her computer inside her vehicle. She suffers from childhood trauma and mental illness, and she claims to have less anxiety on the road then when living a stagnate lifestyle. She became a Christian in January 2015.

She talks openly about not having many friends and feeling lonely. One can see her mental health fluctuate throughout her life through her videos. Just before the pandemic, she rented an apartment in Charleston, NC close to her father as an experiment to see if it was time for her to end her nomadic travels. However, by March 2020, she was already planning to hit the road full-time again when the pandemic struck. She extended her lease for two months, and then in June 2020, she sold her furniture and packed her car. She headed to Nashville to ride out the rest of the pandemic with a close friend with a spare room. In July, she opened an Etsy shop as another form of income, and as of today, she is still hunkering down in Nashville. When she feels safe to get back on the road, she would like to head back to Montana or Utah. Katie’s values include traveling, agency, mental health, self-discovery, autonomy, nature, experiences, friends, and family.

Mapping Katie's Travels

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NOVEL KULTURE

TRAVELING COUPLE

Lovell and Paris began their #vanlife journey in 2017 when they decided to forgo their $2,300/month Los Angeles apartment and move into their cargo van full time. They are both marine veterans and primarily support themselves through the Post-911 GI Bill while attending undergraduate programs in San Francisco. They met in the marines when stationed in Bahrain, Saudi Arabia and married in December 2014. At the time they moved into their van in 2017, Lovell and Paris were 23 and 24 years old, respectively. They travelled around the United States on school breaks, returned to San Francisco during their semesters, and sheltered with family in Indiana during the pandemic lockdowns. Lovell graduated his undergraduate studies in Dec 2020 with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Fashion Marketing. Paris continues to work on her degree in film studies. The two write a personal finance blog on their own experiences living in the van, paying of $50,000 in consumer debt, and starting new investment ventures. Their reason for living in the van was entirely financial. They were tired of living in poverty, paycheck-to-paycheck, and they wanted to be able to invest in real estate and build a financial portfolio. Travel was just a bonus.

They also are very entrepreneurial. They have worked to create several businesses over the years, some of which have not worked out or projects were dropped to work on others. The flexibility of their time has allowed them to build their modest social media accounts and gain traction in the #blackvanlife community. They also promote safety strategies for POC living in vehicles to spread awareness on how to protect oneself when living on the road. Their long-term goal has always been able to build wealth to invest in real estate, and the two plans on eventually settling down and building a production company making narrative and documentary films. In 2020, they thought they might leave van living behind for good; however, they ended up purchasing a used Sprinter van, an upgrade from their current model, and recommitted to another 3-5 years on the road in order to hit their financial goals.

Their most recent income ventures have included vending machines and creating a collection of massage oils they sell through an independent website. Their YouTube channel is still young, but the two regularly post and have adjusted their content over the years to align with their own personal growth.Lovell and Paris have been very calculated in their travels. They make travel plans and timelines prior to departure due to the limitations of their school breaks and financial goals. However, with the pandemic leaving schools remote, the pair can now be far more nomadic than ever before once their new van is finished renovations. Novel Kulture’s values include quality time together, traveling, saving money, investing in their passions, education, financial literacy, educating others, physical fitness, agency, autonomy, and financial mobility.

Mapping Novel Kulture's Travels

THE SYAHIM MAG

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COMPARISON OF USERS

The users are extremely different when evaluating their core values and their ‘why’ for living in a vehicle. Katie uses vehicle-living as a goal, and Novel Kulture uses vehicle-living as a catalyst toward their goals. Novel Kulture is working toward the American Dream of financial stability and prosperity, and Katie is more of a day-by-day nomad. However, she still works to build an online presence that assists in building her financial stability and streams of revenue.

The users present different obstacles. Katie talks openly about being lonely, health issues, both physical and mental, whereas Novel Kulture discusses the black experience of police harassment and discrimination. Novel Kulture put a great deal of planning into their vehicle living. They built-out a cargo van investing in the comfort of vehicle dwelling. They also are strategic about where and when they travel. They always have a plan. Katie, however, did not make any modifications to her vehicle, and she rarely has a plan in mind when hitting the road. She prefers a small car for parking and gas mileage.

Moreover, prior to the pandemic, Novel Kulture was tied to San Francisco where they both physically attended a university. They have since transitioned to Indiana to ride out the pandemic. Katie does not have physical ties to place, so she travels freely when she is in good health. However, she also rode out the pandemic in one place – her friend’s apartment in Nashville, TN.

Some similarities between the users are the resources they capitalize on. They both use gyms as a means of showering regularly, and they both spend the majority of their time in towns/cities. They use social media and online resources to grow their online presence. Katie has branded herself as her business, and Lovell & Paris started Novel Kulture. They both use vehicle dwelling to save money; however, Katie is not nearly as frugal as Novel Kulture.

They both travel quite often to spend long periods of time with family members and surf on family/friend’s couches when available. They both plan to continue the nomadic lifestyle when they feel safe to do so. A big similarity to note is neither groups are “camping”. They are not living in the wilderness for long stretches of time. They occasionally visit national parks, and Katie does appear to enjoy tent camping on occasion. Lovell and Paris are generally stealth camping, camping in public parking or street parking, in urban areas; and Katie often camps at truck stops and large Pilots. Both users seek community through their car-dwelling experiences. Katie seeks community through online dating apps in cities she frequents (pointing to the lack of resources for meeting others when traveling nomadically).

Moreover, Lovell and Paris seek community through meetups and #blackvanlife. However, these meetups are infrequent, and they often try to connect to other POC living alternative lifestyles through their social media.

ANALYSIS OF USERS' NEEDS & VALUES

Based on the lives and motivations of the users studied, the community appears to encompass a range of values as can be summed up by the following: nature, autonomy, freedom, rest, travel, frugality, time, relationships, quality over quantity, entrepreneurship, minimalism, selfdiscipline, and family. Because of this value system, it remains clear these nomadic individuals are willing and open to sacrificing modern, everyday comforts in order achieve their personal and professional goals. For this reason, the needs discovered are rather basic and primitive.

Both users lost vital resources through pandemic restrictions Just the act of making frequent grocery store trips and using public restroom facilities became an issue for the users. They were forced to spend a period of time off the road sheltering in place with family members. These public amenities were vital resources for these individuals, and the world saw just how quickly they could disappear overnight. In order to provide stability to the nomadic, vehicle dwelling community, a consolidation and clear designation of these resources as essential services is necessary. The act of gathering these users based on the promise of physical resources would also organically solve the psychological needs that were proven to be vital issues to both users: a welcoming environment and community development.

The needs of users: access to showers and toilets, access to kitchens and refrigerators, access to stable internet, access to safe and welcoming spaces, and access to a community. The users prefer sleeping in their vehicles and storing their items in their vehicles. Their car/van offers the most amount of security for themselves and the most comfort because all their belongings are already there. Katie even prefers to work remotely in her car for her 8 hour shifts instead of frequenting coffee shops because its more convenient for her, and she is more comfortable doing so. The users really need a place where they can “touchdown” from time-to-time while traveling between cities. And this touchdown site must provide them informal opportunities to meet and gather with other nomadic individuals living similar alternative lifestyles. The need to build a community is very high between both users. They are both craving connections to others living similar lifestyles.

In stating this, it is important to note that the people who need community the most and say they want more community often are hesitant to seek it. For example, Interior Student Alliance at Arizona State University in the Spring 2021 found students continuously polled that they wanted virtual events to build community within the organization during the pandemic; however, not a single person ever showed up to the planned events. Community is only built when people gather to address pressing physical (not mental or psychological) needs. Exhibit X shows the users’ needs. The needs on the left are the reasons people will gather initially; the values on the right are why they will continue to gather again and again over time. The individual need’s circle size notes the importance of the need.

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THE SYAHIM MAG

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SELF-STUDY OF NOMADIC, VEHICLE-DWELLING DOMESTIC LIFE

In addition to the user case studies, I conducted a self-test to determine the domestic activities and shift in interiority while living in a vehicle. I purchased and self-renovated a 2006 Ford E150 cargo van in the spring of 2020, in the same manner many nomadic individuals renovate their vehicle.

Wood was used as the primary building material for bed and storage components. Electrical components including two 100w solar panels and two lithium batteries were added to the vehicle. The van also featured a small refrigerator and transportable inverter. The entire cost of the project (including the vehicle, renovation elements, all components inside the vehicle and travel gear) amounted to $15,000.

I spent six weeks traveling through the American West between June 2020 and August 2020, hitting eleven states total, with my research partner. We documented the daily experience on a website: www. seekingahumanexperience.com. The frequent blog posting assisted in determining the difficulty associated with finding reliable internet sources on the road.

Throughout the self-study, many of the public and commercial spaces in the US cities visited were still shutdown as a result of the persisting COVID-19 pandemic, providing a pivotal look into how difficult it is to survive on the road without access to public and commercial resources. Paradoxically, the pandemic also caused overcrowding on BLM land, campsites, and national parks.

The diagrams to the right detail the our documentation of movement of essential domestic objects and activities in various contexts. For example, the van was parked in campsites, parking lots, BLM land, etc. in order to capture a wide variety of conditions one would encounter when living in a vehicle. The diagrams also note levels of perceived privacy during our stay at the noted locations.

The research found similarities between our experience and that of the case study users. Sleeping and storing objects inside the vehicle felt safe. We found working outside the vehicle to be easier due to the lower ceiling height of the cargo van and socializing also occurred outside the van when in more natural settings. Overall, cities were difficult to navigate for parking and stealth camping. Suburbs were far easier when possessing a Walmart or other large box store allowing overnight parking. The natural environment was the easiest for sleeping purposes.

SPACE-USE DIAGRAM DEPICTING LOCATION OF DOMESTIC ACTIVITIES AND OBJECTS AS OBSERVED IN SELF-STUDY.

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THE SYAHIM MAG

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IDENTIFYING PILOT LOCATIONS FOR NOMADIC INTERVENTIONS

Katie Carney and Novel Kulture’s travel paths were analyzed to predict where they may head following the pandemic. These individuals often revisit places they have already traveled; therefore, it was predicted they would cross paths in cities already identified by their historical travel paths.

Overlaying their maps, one finds Joshua Tree, California to be a destination for both parties, as well as Nashville, Tennessee based on travel patterns to the east and west coast. The I10 heading into California and the I40 crossing Tennessee were the key travel corridors which lead to the selection of these two locations. CASE STUDY USERS' TRAVEL PATTERNS WERE USED TO SELECT LOCATIONS FOR NOMADIC INTERVENTIONS.

Located right off the I10, the South Joshua Tree BLM presents a wonderful opportunity for a nomadic intervention. The site's location off Cottonwood Springs Road leading to the south entrance of Joshua Tree National Park provides ease of access.

The site attracts many nomads throughout the year; the weather is mild compared to northern locations; the land is set back off the highway so it is accessible, but also private; the space is perceived as being safe as determined by the number of people already inhabiting the area; the land is close to Quartzite, AZ, where nomads are known to gather; the land is perfect for nature-drawn and urban-drawn nomads alike because of its proximity to Joshua Tree National Park and its location between cities on the I10. And although being somewhat secluded and on BLM land, cell service is still available at this site, which allows for the ease of internet connection. The land gets plenty of sunlight for solar powered energy, and during the dry months, water can be delivered to the site.

Located off the I40 (stretching from the east to west coast), the shopping strip located at 7657 US-70S in the Bellevue neighborhood of Nashville,

CASE STUDY USERS' TRAVEL PATTERNS WERE USED TO SELECT LOCATIONS FOR NOMADIC INTERVENTIONS.

TN presents an opportunity for the implementation of a nomadic intervention in the suburban parking lot environment.

The location is situated in a strip mall in close proximity to services nomadic travels often seek: Planet Fitness, Home Depot, grocery stores, discount stores, pharmacies, banks, automotive shops, post office, office supply stores, etc. This is a vibrant shopping district – across the street from the address, a dead mall was recently torn down for new retail and dining development. Because of this, a craft and services market would pair nicely with a small, nomadic hub and present financial viability, as crowds of shoppers already frequent the area. This address is also situated within proximity of multiple parks and recreation areas, and health facilities. Water and electric can be captured through existing infrastructure to aid solar and water collection if necessary.

Overall, these two sites provide two very diverse application of the nomadic intervention showcasing the adaptability of the idea to a wide range of contexts. These sites are meant as a small representation of what could later be adopted on a larger scale providing a network of resources for nomadic individuals all across the United States in a broad range of urban, suburban, and natural environment. This level of accessibility to resources would assist in supporting the existing and future nomadic community.

This infrastructure may also assist in encouraging individuals on the sidelines to live nomadically for periods of time in order to start their own entrepreneurial ventures and assist in providing a vehicle for social mobilization for the lower-middle class.