Future Automated Mobilities Design Futures (in-person) workshop

This invitation-only ADM+S research workshop will focus on creating realistic and plausible visions of future automated mobilities, characterised by values of care, safety, trust, and inclusivity.  Design researcher Hannah Korsmeyer will work with ADM+S CI Sarah Pink and PI Vaike Fors and Esbjörn Ebbesson and the ADM+S FAM Research Fellow team (Thao Phan, Jeni Lee and Emma Qulity) to deliver an in-person and on-line workshop. 

The workshop is inspired by the sentiment and commitment towards the values of care, safety, trust and inclusivity which emerged from the CoE for ADM+S Future Automated Mobilities symposium held at the end of 2022. We will collectively respond to the questions outlined below, through a design futures workshop process, drawing on our ethnographic research findings and future focused prompts. Using video recording and design documentation methods the workshop materials will be gathered and will form the basis for future publications. The publication outcomes will acknowledge the contributions of all workshop participants who wish to be named, and will be presented in industry accessible formats as well as in academic publications.

There has been enough hype and failed promises and enough dystopian prediction - self-driving cars are not going to solve problems of environmental sustainability or everyday mobility, but they are also not going to kill people or take people’s jobs away. We need to look beyond the superficial idea that cars will continue to be central for the development of future mobility. Instead, let's look at how AI-driven services and automated mobility technology can become part of solutions that pivot around social and planetary desires, needs and must-do’s. In this effort, we also need to investigate and explore how cross-sectoral and inter-disciplinary engagements can be evoked and aligned to include people’s experiences, knowledge and ideas into the innovation process. In short, what could our mobilities futures really be like if we get it right? And how can we make them happen, and continue to happen, beyond our research interventions?