Future Mobility Design

Human mobility has become a complex and multi domain challenge, balancing between individual wants and collective needs, which cannot be addressed in the narrow scope of a single industry. This minor is the evolution of a minor Automotive Design and anticipates the path on which the industry’s scope gradually enlarges from vehicle design to a holistic mobility design approach. We follow this path through three projects, growing in width, depth, and time scope.

In the first project ‘design outside-in’, the emphasis is on visual qualities of a vehicle. How do people perceive and value (automotive) styling? The goal is to understand design ‘language’ and the ‘level of expertise’ that is required to communicate with, or fulfil a role within, the domain of vehicle design. Lectures include aesthetics, branding and aerodynamics.

In the second ‘design inside-out’ project, students design vehicles that enable people to fulfil their mobility needs in a meaningful way, in a short-term future context. Product-user interaction is investigated qualitatively as much as quantitatively. Lectures include ergonomics, safety, vehicle dynamics, technology and structures, package design and near future developments such as autonomous driving.

In the third ‘Mobility Systems’ project, all comes together in designing a long-term future mobility system. Teams research a future context and design an integrated mobility system. After which, each team member individually designs a full vehicle in that mobility system. Ethical choices on sustainability and inclusion help the designer to take a stand. Bringing together technology, usability, and styling, elicits what the designer wants to accomplish with and for people. Lectures include the taxonomy of human goals, mobility systems (policies, services and products), sustainability and the build environment.

The whole is framed by a guiding course ‘Human Mobility’, which frames the three project courses, safeguarding their coherence and connection. Lectures address context driven design, design project management and program coherence. Necessary skills, such as visualisation in the widest possible sense, are being developed in parallel.Students compose their own reader, their final individual deliverable.

At the end of the minor:

• You will acquire knowledge on automotive and mobility design and technology, and develop an understanding of their meaning, and therefore their reason of being, in specific societal contexts.
• You will learn how to design new meaningful products in the field of mobility. Products can be new policies and services, include new vehicles in the widest possible sense, and the mobility system that incorporates all these entities.
• You will learn how to work with a context driven design process.
• You develop skills to visualize ideas appropriately throughout the design process, and to visually express all knowledge derived from that design process, through hand-sketching and digital visualization techniques. You will understand their respective roles and values in multidisciplinary design teams.
• You will learn secondary skills like design project management and presenting your work in a professional manner, both verbally and visually.
• You will understand the merits and the value of design research and participate in research projects.
• You will learn to work in international and multidisciplinary project teams.

Registration for this thematic minor is on a first-come, first-served basis and available places. (No lottery draw).

If you are a third year bachelor student in any of the designated faculties, this program is designed for you. You may find yourselves out of your comfort zone regularly, but many preceded you successfully.

Our arena is the city of Rotterdam, which whom we cooperate, and where you will also spend time doing research.

Student at Leiden University, TU Delft or Erasmus University Rotterdam?
Check the eligibility matrix to see if your bachelor’s degree programme offers access to this and other minors at https://www.tudelft.nl/minor

Student at another educational institution?
First read the whole registration procedure at https://www.tudelft.nl/minor

For information about the courses, visit the TU Delft study guide.
For additional information on this minor, visit the TU Delft minor page.

Monday afternoon until Thursday end of day, we follow a fixed schedule with lectures, individual project work, workshops, and coaching sessions. Next to fieldtrips you will also spend time in Rotterdam, with whom we cooperate in this program. There are individual projects and team projects.

Those are being assessed by a jury, each member judging from their own specialism. Your final assessment also includes your overall growth, which is demonstrated in an individual reader which you compose over the course of the program.

Check the detailed overview of courses, learning activities and study load at https://www.studyguide.tudelft.nl/