FACE THE CHANGE Explore New Ways “We work in agile teams where there is no room for autocrats. And we get as much feedback as possible from our users.” Alisa Goikhman, UX Design Concepter customer needs during the various stages of life. In the fourth week, the team built its first pod, complete with a wooden chassis and padded seats, in the workshop. “Here at the Future Center, we make most of our stuff ourselves,” says Exterior Designer Marian Hilgers. The center has experts on just about everything, everything is possible, and everything is in motion. At the Volkswagen Design Center Potsdam, the predecessor to the Future Center opened in 2016, demonstration studies had to be practically production-ready models. As far as the Urban Shared Pod is concerned, the provisional character typical of prototypes is the order of the day. Team USP gets feedback from users at the end of every development step – initially as a digital experience with virtual reality headsets, and later “live” in the Wizard Bus, where testers can try out the USP complete with all services. The bus has a smart way of simulating autonomous driving. The passengers are unaware there is in fact a driver, because what they see is images of the view through the windscreen as taken by a camera and projected on a screen, creating a remarkably realistic sense of what autonomous driving is like. It did not take the team long to agree on the mobility concept. “Ride hailing is a sharing concept that suits plenty of users,” says Inae Song, UX Design Concepter. The USP is ordered by app, collects users at their pick-up point and lets them ride for as long as they want. During the ride, passengers can order food or “coffee to drive” for delivery to the USP, or they can book concert tickets via the screen. Or they can listen to their favorite kind of music – entertainment, karaoke or meditation. On our visit, Team USP was in the middle of a sprint to optimize digital apps to suit user needs and develop intelligent payment models and All their own work: the teams use Lego sets (left) or virtual reality rooms (below) to realize their projects. networks. The project approach is iterative. Each result is continuously improved. “One of our advantages is that we are able to develop outside the series processes,” says Aaron Post, Interior Designer. “That gives us more flexibility. And possibly more open to unusual impulses.” The Future Center mindset is evidently catching on. Other centers in Beijing and California have started working on a better understanding and evaluation of customer needs in the key markets of China and North America. And Future Center
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