Visual thinking in designing a future mobility research and education strategy

Abstract

em’s approach in which core design knowledge is as important as an understanding of human behaviour and how to elicit and inspire that. To adapt to this new reality the automotive industry must reframe its design processes, structure and culture. As researchers and educators, grooming the next generation of future proof automobility designers, we must be at the forefront of this paradigm change. We must embrace its complexity and adapt a similar holistic approach, evoking cross-fertilization in research and education between departments, faculties and industry partners. To facilitate this at our university, a virtual laboratory is set-up to establish continuous and coherent interdisciplinary research on the long-term future of human mobility. This user driven platform actively evokes true cross fertilisation between all involved parties. The underlying mechanism for this virtual laboratory is a three-dimensional framework, representing the holistic space in which all research, design and education projects have their respective positions. The first dimension is a timeline, on which all stakeholders have mapped out future developments in their own domains, visualising the overarching long-term vision of each. The second dimension has three levels on which all projects are being positioned; context level, system level and product level. Research into human behaviour is likely to be at context level while seat comfort testing sits at product level. A third dimension is that of the traditional scientific domains e.g. automotive, infrastructure or the build environment. Owners position their research, education and design projects in this framework, making their holistic relationships i.e. opportunities to share knowledge, facilities and experimentation instantly visible. Because both research and education are embedded, rapid implementation of research outcome into education accelerates the development of forefront mobility design and automobility design education, to ensure the employability of our future designers.