Paradigm shift: the aesthetic of the automobile in the age of sustainability

A great challenge for a future sustainable society is to create a new design culture protecting environmental value. A new product’s language is determinant not only for marketing success and public acceptance, but also for a new understanding of the conflict between aesthetics and ethics that haunts the development of this new design language. The designer’s approach to the new trends will certainly deal with the relationship between industry and society, form and function, package and architecture, and it is an opportunity to create new and coherent design

Inovação e mudança de paradigmas no design automotivo: Tesla e Google - Innovation and paradigm shift on automotive design: Tesla and Google

The book chapter ‘Innovation and paradigm shift on automotive design: Tesla and Google’ investigates de cases of Google and Tesla as agents of innovation in car industry, bringing new approaches to the relationship between car and infrastructure and the car and the user. The work builds on the previous research ‘Paradigm shift: the aesthetic of the automobile in the age of sustainability’ and analyses the impacts of the proposed by these companies in the way car are conceived, produced and used. The chapter was the first publication in Portuguese which included findings from the previous RCA PhD research and has presented new case studies related to its hypothesis. The initial research used design outputs to experiment and create scenarios to look at the research questions. The following work relates the outcomes of the research with the new case studies, pointing out the convergence between the studies and real cases and bringing the focus to market impacts. In addition, new issues on infrastructure and production not covered before were analyzed expanding the research. The book chapter was written solely by the author as an analytical text to contribute to a collection of views about future automotive market published by the Italian-Brazilian trading agency in 2015

How to share what we used to own

Paper at the 2019 EVER Monaco Ecological Vehicles and Renewable Energies Conference. This paper looks at the challenges to shift the mobility culture from ownership to sharing, in the context of ecological and autonomous vehicles. It proposes the observation of social aspects of car use and to build knowledge to educate people to live in a shared mobility scenario, and points out the importance of developing meaningful mobility experiences The paper looks into the context of rural transport and questions the monetization of shared mobility through the analysis of the Joyful Journeys project which observes the case of an elderly driver who gives lifts in a countryside village. It addition, it investigates through a new analysis of the RCA´s Frisbee car sharing project, aspects of placemaking and identity related to sharing cars. It concludes by indicating how the concepts of resilience, inclusive design and identity can develop in a shared mobility context. The paper proposes the development of sharing cars beyond business models, product and services development, but through designing a cultural change. © 2019 IEEE. Personal use of this material is permitted. Permission from IEEE must be obtained for all other uses, in any current or future media, including reprinting/republishing this material for advertising or promotional purposes, creating new collective works, for resale or redistribution to servers or lists, or reuse of any copyrighted component of this work in other works

Driverless futures: Design for acceptance and adoption in urban environments

The driverless or autonomous car offers a range of challenges and opportunities – technical, economic and social – to the UK and the world. Harrow led the academic research for GATEway, an £8M Innovate UK project led for industry by the Transport Research Laboratory in which the RCA was the principal university. It created a world-leading test-bed for driverless cars that enabled automotive and software industries, local authorities, planners, insurers, Government ministers, policy makers and others to evaluate new vehicles and new technologies applied to existing vehicles, and to understand the human behaviours and attitudes emerging around these new forms of transport. The work is crucial to the future of mobility and to future cities, the connected digital economy, and future manufacturing. Harrow focused on design research, comprising stakeholder engagement, codesign with user groups, scenario building, studies of users through observation and interview, attitude discovery through traditional and digital means, and dissemination through multiple media. A key motivation was to use autonomous vehicles for social benefit especially for groups ill-served by current transport. The research led to new knowledge about vehicles, systems and behaviours, much of which was distilled into the RCA GATEway report. Additional dissemination included: peer-reviewed journal article in Municipal Engineer (2018); paper at 6th International Conference for Universal Design, Nagoya, Japan (2016); feature in exhibition and book NEW OLD: Designing for Our Future Selves, Design Museum, London (2017); book chapter for Institute of Civil Engineering Publishing (in press); keynote for Seoul Smart Mobility (29 September 2016) as a central part of Seoul Design Week

Joyful Journeys

The Joyful Journeys video is part of the Choreography of Mobility research project exhibited at the 2018 London Design Festival. The Choreography of Mobility research project investigates the transitions from products to services, from materiality to immateriality, or ultimately, from things to ideas, which are scope of future mobility designs. The objective of the Choreography of Mobility project is to explore the components of mobility creating a parallel with ballet, to address how they could be orchestrated to create joyful mobility experiences. In its initial stages, the research focused on investigating which elements help to create meaningful mobility experiences. The Joyful Journeys tests tools to capture people’s perceptions, emotions and aspirations related to current and future journeys. The tools used include journey shadowing, interviews, art and design provocation and co-creation workshop. The video featured at the London Design Festival explores a journey on the countryside, where people independently organize lifts to the local church. It addresses the questions of transport poverty, social interaction and wellbeing related to mobility as a service and new technologies. The interview shows surprising social aspects of mobility and the significance of experiences of driving and sharing. At the same time, it presents a view about technology comforts and innovation, from handle-start to flying cars. The video was used to start a debate at the London Design Festival about social and emotional values on mobility contexts. From the Joyful Journeys the research developed a chapter for the book Design For Wellbeing (Routledge, 2019), a conference paper about sharing cars (EVER 2019) and a starting-collaboration with MaaS companies (Zinc Mission-2). Artur Mausbach leads the research at IMDC in collaboration with Loughborough University

Shaping Autonomous Vehicles: Towards a Taxonomy of Design Features Instilling a Sense of Safety

Autonomous vehicles (AVs) are Artificial Intelligence (AI)-enabled service robots. Whilst having the potential to enhance our transport systems and journey experiences, there are concerns that the public may be reluctant to adopt AVs, largely driven by doubts about their safety. In this study, we focussed on the role of the exterior vehicle design to instil a sense of safety on behalf of the passenger and bystander, i.e. pedestrians and cyclists. Senior automotive and transport designers were interviewed to identify key design features which revealed a common understanding of key features but also an apparent dichotomy or incompatibility in terms of design directions when considering passengers versus bystanders. Furthermore, designers’ understanding was largely based on their experience of conventional vehicles leading to uncertainty as to the validity in the context of future AVs. The results provide an initial set of design features that will be tested and evaluated with prospective AV users to explore the potential knowledge gap between designers’ intentions and customers’ expectation. This will provide design practitioners tangible, relatable anchors to direct activities towards critical design features whilst enabling design management to introduce more objectivity in their decision making

Ecofitting circular economy: An alternative approach to market, consumption, and design towards zero emissions

Ecofitting Circular Economy -An alternative approach to market, consumption, and design towards zero emissions is a peer reviewed paper presented at the 2020 EVER Monaco Conference on Electric Vehicles and Renewable Energies, which reports on the initial findings of the research leaded by Artur Mausbach. Mausbach’s research is concerned with the investigation on the aesthetics of sustainability to support the transitions of the automobile. In this project he proposes a new circular economy strategy to contribute towards zero-emissions in a sustainable manner by retrofitting the existing fleet of internal Combustion Engine (ICE) cars. The research addresses the destiny of 15 million non-compliant ICE cars in the UK alone which are currently expected to be exported, recycled, or disposed of, following the requirements for Ultra Low Emission vehicles and targets for zero-emissions. In response, the project creates the concept of Ecofitting to promote behavioural change, and long-term ownership. Initial research looked at legislation and data from the department of transport to conclude that cars made after 1980 until the implementation of the current emission standards are worthy candidates for Ecofitting. The research also identified trends in automotive design represented by past leanings, the car culture around restoring and customization, the search for meaningful lifestyle, and the behaviour favouring disruptive attitudes, as a possible support to alternative approaches to automotive design. Research on the struggles of automotive industry and retrofitting companies indicates how to create an industry focused on local production and social cohesion. By encouraging the act of reusing, recycling, and updating products in usability, technology and aesthetics, the project promotes whole-life design and provides opportunities to engage a wide network of stakeholders as part of a circular economy. Ecofitting project was awarded by EPSRC CENTS to develop a feasibility study

Plenary: Anti-ephemeral design for responsible production and consumption of mobility

This paper introduces the concept of Anti-Ephemeral Design through a dis-cussion about automotive design responsibility on collaborating to the generation of consumption habits which have great impact on the environ-ment. The paper examines the relationship between consumerism and the mythical images of the automobile. Findings from the Joyful Journeys [1] and Ecofitting [2] projects are used to point out the need to look at tangible and intangible aspects of design to address both environmental, economic, socio-ethic and subjective aspects of sustainability. The paper proposes an alignment with new values, to design, produce and consume mobility sus-tainably

Ecofitting: Design directions upgrading cars to zero emissions

This paper presents the design directions for Ecofitting, a sustainable solution for the large UK fleet of internal combustion engine cars that will soon be rendered noncompliant with fast approaching initiatives for Ultra Low Emission Vehicles. Ecofitting circular economy strategy goes beyond just electrification, opening an opportunity for new approaches to automotive design, and to cater for generational shifts in desirability. State-of-the-art, taxonomic and trend mapping research have identified opportunities for retrofitting leading to four proposed design directions inspired and influenced by sustainable practices across other industries, that directly involve the consumer, and provide an alternative approach to the longstanding aesthetic of perfection historically seen in vehicle design