I follow the latest designs in intelligent mobility, all of which strive to improve the efficiency of future traffic and travel. With the development of the Internet of Things, how to communicate information to other vehicles in a timely manner is a topic that requires constant attention and research.
During my studies at the Royal College of Art, I carried out in-depth research on this topic, starting with macro theories and moving into the realisation of sub-disciplines. The existing system of vehicle light interaction is no longer adequate for the upcoming autonomous driving scenario and we need to develop and research more light languages and form a new system.
The vehicle machine is also an important part of human-vehicle interaction, so we need to envisage new user scenarios and simulate the experience of using them, to come up with new design directions and to analyse how people will use lights to communicate properly in the future.
For the final project of the Master's degree, we divided the design into two parts. The first part is a new light language for the future of intelligent transport. After a lot of research, we decided that cyan was the colour that would give the most security. We used this colour to design new light clusters on the body of the vehicle and gave them a meaningful way of showing the driving status to other traffic participants. The second part is a new direction for human-machine interaction in the car, where the driver can interact with the outside world by changing the light display on the body through gestures. Real-time road data can also be transmitted to the back office to provide data to help other collective participants and optimise the overall traffic efficiency of the city.
For the design of the light clusters, we were inspired by the stunning butterflies of nature. The bionic design is based on the wing structure of a butterfly. Expressing a new aesthetic direction for the future of transport. Using nature to design the future.
Faced with the ever-changing medium, the challenge for every designer is how to use these mediums and technologies to express themselves. The speed at which AI is developing today has taken people by surprise, but sticking to the best expressions and interactions is what we have been pursuing, without blindly following the trend. There are boundaries, and there are scales, but it is not possible to accomplish new designs through datafication, standardisation or novelty.
When each vehicle leaves the production hall, it is confronted by a variety of collective participants, and how to control their communication is the art of future transport design. Transport lives and dies with people, and design lives and dies with people.
