Valeo

In order to reimagine the experience of the future family car, myself - a product designer, Cecilia Butini - journalist, Martin Funck - engineer, Max Klee - lawyer, and Inken Palend - consumer expert, came together to do a cross-cultural analysis between families in France, China and Germany to see what potential opportunities await the international interior automotive and accessories company Valeo. Using the Design Thinking process, we began our search by finding user pain points in the German capital of Berlin. All the while testing concepts and gaining insights to bridge our findings once we landed in France and China to pilot and cross check our prototypes and assumptions.

We discovered that though very different approaches to family structures and automotive use, there were more similarities to design for that could benefit all parties involved. What was most important were the children at the core of the issues and their relationship threatened by population growth, demanding schedules and lack of interpersonal, cross-generational connection. So our goal for this project was to figure out how to rekindle the fleeting quality time amongst families; whether that means talking together or playing together this became our central focus for the remainder of the project. This is in response to our observations that the car is the most time family members spend with each other without the distractions of technology or chores over the course of a day before once more dispersing to the demands of their everyday individual needs.