What is holistic design?
Holistic design is about going deeper – Royal College of Art’s Chris Thorpe
RCA’s head of programme for the Intelligent Mobility MA course delves into holistic mobility, the wider ecosystem and how autonomy might change this
Holistic design highlights the importance of understanding the world you are designing for. Perhaps there’s a problem that needs solving, or the functionality of a product doesn’t align with human instinct – it’s all about understanding the ‘why’ behind design and carrying that through all design stages.
As part of the Intelligent Mobility course, Chris Thorpe explores this topic in depth, believing that holistic design should make up the foundations of any good designer’s career.
To learn more, Car Design News spoke to Thorpe about how designers should think of the vehicle as part of a wider ecosystem, the opportunities for the next generation of designers to shape experiences that extend beyond the car and how holistic design actually change the way designers approach mobility challenges.
Car Design News: How would you define holistic design?
Chris Thorpe: Good design should be holistic design. Designers should come up with well-rounded solutions that meet brands’ expectations but also engage the consumers in a multi-sensory and multi-experiential way. This also partly depends on the individual designer, they should build their own approach on what holistic design means for them. Some take a more user-centred approach, but I think it’s about opening up to be aware of how mobility design works in its most holistic sense, considering a whole range of factors as part of the design initiative.
CDN: Interesting, so would you say that user experience is a key element of holistic design?
CT: User experience is key, but there’s also other factors at play. Within the Intelligent Mobility course, we start with a module called ‘People and Places’, so the students’ first exposure to mobility is being asked to think about designing mobility as part of an environment and how it works against all the other disciplines. They are taking a place-centred view of mobility rather than simply focusing on the vehicle and brand itself. As a result, students are immediately thinking about how vehicles are competing on roads with public transport and so on. Technology also makes up part of these learnings, looking at how autonomous systems are interpreted.
CDN: With this, do you think autonomous vehicles will work in harmony with the idea of holistic design?
CT: I think the design of autonomous vehicles is extremely complex and a big opportunity for designers. There are some practical challenges – how should we orient passengers into the direction they’re facing when they’re in a moving object? What are the design rules for that? That comes back to the importance of deep research techniques to actually understand user experience. Once that research has been conducted, then designers can bring in their creativity to come up with new ideas. There probably needs to be more thought about the architecture of these vehicles – we are seeing symmetrical vehicles, for example, and there’s a big debate about how we should think about them, whether they work visually and how that changes the visual landscape. There are lots of design questions that we haven’t properly unpacked yet.
CDN: What are the other key elements to consider when approaching design from a holistic standpoint?
CT: Designers need to fundamentally understand the needs of different users, so inclusive design is a factor in play, particularly as we’re experiencing an aging population. A good understanding of the target user for a particular vehicle should be present at the start of the design process. This doesn’t necessarily mean catering for a wide range of users, because sometimes a target audience can be very focused.
But in public transportation vehicles, ergonomic and psychological issues of use become more important. User-centric design goes beyond age too, it’s also about the mindset and the identity of users. We’re only just starting to truly understand how digital native user groups, who have grown up with a completely different set of expectations, operate in the world.
Brand is another factor at play, it’s important to consider who the brand is and what the its values are – as each brand has its own identity and design DNA. Understanding that is key.
CDN: Following on from your mention of brand identity, do you feel like marketing is something that designers need to be more aware of in their holistic sphere?
CT: Some brands are naturally richer in terms of the storytelling that goes along with their products. Newer brands are still establishing themselves, but we want our students to be able to think creatively about the whole experience. To understand the brand and be able to deconstruct that as well as to be thoughtful, critical and mindful that each brand has a different set to values and history. Designers should also bring a fresh and critical view to the brand space.
CDN: There also seems to be an expectation for designers to be their own brand and have a very strong identity – is this something you’ve noticed?
CT: The strongest designers who go on to be successful in our programme can be seen developing their own identity almost from the first day. If they are sensitive to their values and what they see as a strong piece of design and then able to translate that, their design work becomes interrelated in a very strong way. The most reputable designers have that connection between them and their design work – it’s an expression of you.
CDN: What are some of the opportunities for the next generation of designers to shape experiences that extend beyond the car?
CT: We’re in an interesting time now, particularly with the rapid evolution of AI, which means that advanced digital systems are going to become part of brands. From a cultural design perspective, I think we’re going to see big opportunities for designers to become more thoughtful about the experience, rather than a purely technological
