Workshop 2 [21/3/2014]
To follow up with the themes that developed out of Workshop 1 , we organised and conducted a full day workshop that ran in two interest strands to develop Design ideas for the Family Car: Supporting Family Issues & Game Play in the Car. We had an exciting mix of designers, students and researchers with backgrounds in Industrial Design, HCI and Games Design participating in developing design ideas within these interests.
-Supporting the needs of parents in the Family car
Within this interest strand, we had participants exploring design opportunities for targeting 1) the organisational features of family work in the car, 2)the integration of existing technologies into the car and finally 3) thoughts on how to support practices of care- remembering artifcats for specific journeys, planning ahead for the nature of the journey. We observed that designing for families in cars is particularly challenging as there are complex issues to deal with-multiple users, vast amounts of information and the added challenge of designing technology and systems that do not disrupt driving.Technologies with optimal amounts of information was key to designing of these technologies.
-Designing for the playful Family Car Experience
Within the interest strand of studying play practices in the family car, we looked into how design can draw inspiration from :1) how mobile technologies are being incorporated into the car for entertainment purposes, 2)the impact of parental practices and regimes around technology use, 3)re-configuration of screen-based entertainment to increase children’s engagement with the outside environment. Some ideas that developed out of this were around exploring games design for the car that incorporates turn-taking and involvement of objects in the outside environment. There were also some game concepts to encourage game play across passengers within the car.
We will be further collaborating with designers and users to develop these ideas into concepts.
Automedia: Family Cars Media. 