Automotive Human Centred Design Methods

Human Centred Design　integrates multidisciplinary expertise towards enhancing human well-being and empowering people. In its most basic form it leads to products, systems and services which are physically, perceptually, cognitively and emotionally intuitive. In its most advanced form it discovers and unlocks latent needs and desires, supporting the achievement of desired futures for society.

Automotive Human Centred Design Methods is a handbook of techniques aimed directly at designers, but which will hopefully be purchased also by engineers, marketers, branding experts and customer relations teams. The "value proposition" of the book is that it provides an easy introduction to the world of human centred design methods for those automotive sector experts who are currently being asked to widen their skill set. Most automotive sector businesses are currently forcing their staff to consider customer needs and desires as part of their day-to-day activity, i.e. the companies are telling staff that they cannot continue to concentrate only on matters of mathematics, statistics or creative　conception. The book is attempting to "ride the wave" of the current move　from "designed by experts" to " products for the people by the people". In summary, the core audience for the book　can be predicted to be designers.

This book focuses on the methods that capture the visible and invisible information about customers, including data about their interactions with the motor vehicle, their behaviour towards certain components, and their beliefs and values toward the brand as a whole. An extensive literature review was performed by the authors to review all currently available human centred design methods. Search sources included both academic and non-academic databases. Over 600 methods were initially identified using the search terms, of which 327 were eligible, 270 were excluded because of duplication and 51 were collected and included in this book. A series of workshops with automotive designers was carried out to validate the method set collected.

Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) is providing a formal corporate introduction which will discuss and support the need for human centred design in the automotive industry and will mention JLR's sponsorship of the AutoHabLab project, which lead to the　book. The introduction will state that the book represents an attempt at "cultural change" from a purely technical focus to a more　customer orientated focus. In addition, JLR images will be used as "section breaks" when passing from one type of information to another. Those images will include JLR products and brand priorities.