Bridging User’s Needs and Innovation: Collaborative and participatory design methods to involve users in early NEV design process
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School of Arts, Design and Architecture |
Master's thesis
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en
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146
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With the advancing technology and the fast-paced lifestyle, the private vehicle is becoming more than a form of transportation. It will become a third living space in people’s daily lives, where people can rest, work, and meet friends. Therefore, understanding users’ potential needs and current pain points can provide smart car companies with novel insights to have more personalized functions. Currently, most car companies only involve users in the process of usability testing to verify some existing assumptions. To fill this gap in innovative design and dig deeper into users’ needs, collaborating with users in the design process should also be tested in car concept innovation. This thesis is done in collaboration with NIO, a new energy vehicle company in Shanghai, China. Throughout the research process, to understand how and what kind of PD can be applied with NIO, the different participatory design methods and tools were explored and evaluated by comparing their strengths and limitations to build a methodology library. Based on the tool library, a toolkit was proposed for NIO to encourage participants to think further use scenarios in detail and collect participants’ ideas for future rear space design. Furthermore, a co-design activity was also conducted with NIO’s users in China to collect their issues of using the current gear screen and gear space and their expectations for future gear space. To fit better into the cultural and the technology-company setting in China, by reviewing the methodology library, the final co-design activities combined the form of focus groups and workshops. The positive feedback from participants and the outcome of the activities showed the benefits of collaborating with users in the early process, and the toolkits did encourage users to be more actively engaged in the co-creating activities. However, the factors, such as age and use experience, should be carefully considered within the cultural context when applying co-design methods. In this thesis, the observations of the collaboration show that age and familiarity with technology influenced participants’ engagement levels. This thesis shows the potential benefits of applying co-design and PD in a Chinese innovative NEV company, to bring every relative people to the same stage. Although, during the co-creation session, Chinese cultural effects, participants’ characteristics, and time constraints limited the participants’ engagement level. The whole project received positive feedback. And NIO is planning to iterate the toolkits design in future projects.Description
Supervisor
Roto, VirpiThesis advisor
Svanda, AnnukkaXiao, Youge