Reimagining mobility, one working session at a time
Being a graduate student at UC Berkeley comes with a few perks. My primary focus on product design has acquired a few new dimensions this semester: my coursework in social psychology and applied behavioral economics has informed my role in helping teach a design research class at the Jacobs Institute for Design Innovation, called Reimagining Mobility. For example, if behavioral economics tells me that I behave irrationally in the presence of others, social psychology helps explain the underlying phenomenon. Applied to a specific scenario like how 30 people might behave in an autonomous ride-sharing bus 10 years down the line, this cross-disciplinary knowledge becomes a tool in helping students with their projects, as they try to reimagine mobility, one working session at a time.
The class
Spread over two semesters, this class is taught by Lauren Ruiz and sponsored by Ford, with the aim to develop solutions that assist, augment or automate humans’ interaction with automobiles. Anthony Prozzi, a senior designer at Ford, kicked the class off with a stirring speech about the state of automobiles. “You can step into any car today and if you observe carefully, it won’t take you more than 10 minutes to notice what an unpleasant experience it is,” he noted. He encouraged the students to responsibly advance the goal of mobility. Some of the ideas that came out of this discussion included defining standards for ethics in autonomous cars, enhancing the emotional experience between people and cars or even exploring cars that double as homes. Since that day, Lauren and I have been amazed by the work that students have been doing to further these ideas.
Our process
The fall semester of Reimagining Mobility emphasizes a human-centered approach to researching and refining ideas. Lauren, who is a vastly experienced designer and instructor, teaches research methods and best practices for how to apply them. She encourages teams of students to speak with people outside the campus community and empathize with them through exploratory and generative research. The class, which meets every Thursday, is also largely interactive. Not only do teams of students volunteer to present the readings for that week, Lauren and I actively work to help them with framing questions, drawing insights from interviews, empathy mapping and journey mapping. Here are some of the challenges that our class is working on:
- How might we make passengers feel safe in an autonomous ride-sharing experience?
- How might we enable independent and safe transport for young children?
- How might we improve the experience of transportation for people with disabilities, so they are integrated with all people?
- How might we design cars that double as different experiences based on what you need to do at that time?
Apart from getting feedback on their work, students also learn from guest lecturers. Chris Noessel spoke about his work in agentive tech and it how relates to augmenting and automating people’s everyday tasks. Mickey McManus, an Autodesk fellow, spoke about machine learning and how it is changing industries such as architecture, manufacturing, and changing the role of designers.
As students inch towards the end of the semester, they are expected to develop a research report of their findings, a concept pitch for their idea, and develop a low-fidelity prototype. Next semester, in the second phase of the class, teams can refine their prototypes using high-fidelity prototyping techniques. They will learn tools like Arduino, laser cutting, 3D printing, and more.
The students have had the opportunity to present to the CEO of Ford Smart Mobility, Raj Rao, along with several other important Ford stakeholders. They have been gaining real-world feedback to push their ideas to the next level in the spring.
Personally, working with Lauren and helping students has been a very rewarding experience. Coming to Berkeley was a huge decision for me and access to such great opportunities makes it truly worthwhile.
Learn more about Reimagining Mobility, and visit the Jacobs Winter Design Showcase to see what our students and their fellow student designers at Jacobs Hall have created this semester.
