PolyU Design and Royal College of Art (UK) co-organised workshop on future shared autonomous vehicle experiences

On 23 April, the Research Centre for Future (Caring) Mobility (RC-FCM) of PolyU collaborated with the Intelligent Mobility Design Centre (IMDC) from the Royal College of Art (RCA) to hold the Co-creation Workshop, guiding design students to come up with joyful, inclusive and intuitive shared autonomous vehicle experiences in the context of 2040’s city. 

Led by Prof. Stephen J. Wang, Director of Research Centre for Future (Caring) Mobility of PolyU, Dr. Cyriel Diels, Deputy Director of Intelligent Mobility Design Centre, RCA, Ms Herin Haramoto, Mr Yichen Shu, Research Associates of IMDC, and Ms Yaqi Zhang, PhD Student, SD, PolyU, the workshop was designed to allow students to freely explore the possibilities of building novel relationship between a person and an autonomous vehicle. 

Prof Stephen J. Wang emphasised that “One of the key themes of the workshop was the importance of designing for human-vehicle interactions and user experience. this workshop was well aligned with our Research Center (RC-FCM)’s vision ‘to tackle on the ‘wicked’ real-world challenges such as the future caring in transportation, transit UX, communication and integration of personal information in mobility, automobile cybersecurity, and UX in emerging transport modes, and wellbeing aspects in connected and autonomous vehicles.’

Multifaceted exercises and activities including bodystorming, user-journey plotting, and design evaluation were involved in the workshop. Students were fully engaged in the thinking process, from brainstorming to performing their results from bodystorming.

The workshop is part of a research project co-conducted by PolyU and RCA entitled ‘Design for Autonomous Mobility’. Funded by AiDlab, the project aims to explore the experience of future autonomous vehicles, which are in the absence of steering wheels and pedals and will be driven by themselves. The workshop has provided a valuable platform for participants to share knowledge, exchange ideas, and collaborate on innovative design solutions for autonomous mobility.

By fostering interdisciplinary collaboration between the two world-leading human-centred Research Centres, the workshop has evidenced how such international collaboration could drive forward new approaches to designing for autonomous mobility and create a more user-friendly and efficient transportation system for the future.