How to do car design remotely – Ford
The Coronavirus pandemic has changed the way in which millions of people around the world are living and working. The automotive industry is scrambling to adapt, and while some areas such as manufacturing have come to a halt, the latest digital tools are allowing car designers to keep going.
In this series of short articles, Car Design News talks to the world’s leading designers about virtual car design, the challenges and the possibilities.
Amko Leenarts, design director, Ford of Europe, describes how he and his team are dealing with the crisis.
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Ford’s designers are working from home and handling most of the design processes in the digital world. The health of our workforce has been the highest priority and the decision for everyone to work remotely was implemented very quickly. I’m personally really impressed by our teams and their flexibility in adjusting to the situation.
We have all the latest technology to help with working remotely. Our designers are using the necessary hardware and software, and are also continuing with hand sketching. The most challenging factor is to keep confidentiality intact, so we see a lot of team members in basements, attics or locked up in bedrooms during the day. It’s tough to work under those conditions and stay creative, all alone. I have a huge respect for everyone involved.
The design team is staying in contact by any means possible, from WhatsApp message groups and video calls to the more traditional emails. I personally organise daily calls to give my reports, and I also provide our wider team with a weekly update. There is a fine balance between not communicating enough or communicating too much. We’re learning to do even more with less, so creativity is at its peak.
We do plenty of virtual design reviews, but the cadence has been intensified since the Covid-19 crisis. I have set up virtual reality tools at my home, and other important team members have done the same. So we have been able to keep on track with the most important business milestones.
We have quite a bit of experience working virtually. One example is our Fordzilla project, which we launched two years ago and are currently in the middle of the design process.
Back in 2018 we saw a unique opportunity to be the first OEM to start our own eSports teams. We recruited our captains in the five largest eSports markets, and they have created a large team of drivers to compete in many events on various platforms, always under the TeamFordZilla brand. This has been a great adventure so far and adds a new layer to our brand performance history.
Ford is one of the most chosen race cars in the virtual world. Our team captains have great connections with the gaming community, so the logical next step is to co-create a virtual racecar. Unlike any other car design project, we see this as an open-source process where the community can bring creativity to the table. We’ve just finished eight Twitter polls to get some input, and received over 220,000 votes. We are now in the process of creating the design brief. I have high expectations for this unique collaboration between the gaming community, creative community and my own design teams.
