A human approach to designing future cities and intelligent cars

A new Drive Sweden project hosted by Halmstad University combines experimental prototyping and testing of intelligent services for urban development and autonomous vehicles, with participatory and human centred research. The goal is to establish new ways of developing modern vehicles and smart cities for a sustainable social environment.

It is very likely that semi-autonomous intelligent vehicles will drive on our streets in the near future. This offers new opportunities for the integration of intelligent vehicles into a growing digital urban service economy and infrastructure. But to be sustainable, a shift is needed in the way that smart city technologies are designed.

”We need to design with rather than for the users, and we need research models that address this shift”, says Vaike Fors, Associate Professor in Pedagogy at Halmstad University.

Collaboration across disciplines for a human centred development

Vaike Fors is leading the design ethnographic project "Co-designing future smart urban mobility services—a human approach" (AHA), that brings together technology designers, urban planners, and social researchers. As part of the project, the different stakeholders meet to share their perspectives so that together they can tackle future challenges within urban planning and the development of autonomous cars. The project is part of Drive Sweden.

Read the full article at Halmstad University