VIRTUAL: Applying Education

Abstract

The complexity of contemporary society and mobility imposes the rethinking or adaptation of well-established ways of designing products and services which are no longer effective in tackling systemic and sustainability problems. Developing experiential learning in this regard is required to adopt new teaching methods and strategies in higher education to enable students’ collaboration and co-creation whilst supporting their design thinking and skills formation. The proposed paper intends to critically reflect on collaborative, research based and industry-informed integrated approaches to education through two distinct, but complementary project case studies, developed respectively at Northumbria University and the Politecnico di Milano. An analysis is provided to illustrate how students approach projects through design and innovation methods alongside their developmental skills used to deal with complexity and propose well thought-out solutions. The first case study is based on an exploration project of future mobility where autonomous vehicles (AVs) are supported by artificial intelligence (AI) to gauge how they would better serve different users and respond to extreme situations. The second case study revolves around the social and ethical need to design innovative vehicles and mobility solutions specifically devised to ensure inclusion and accessibility for impaired users and adaptation in extreme environments. Both project journeys offer several key design and educational considerations to ponder on as the common practice of transport design is often behind in terms of understanding needs and issues of today’s society. After all, current industry-based technologies and development methodologies are no longer enough to enable graduates to necessarily meet the challenges of the fast-changing transport and mobility sector to secure employability.