Integrated multi-disciplinary approaches in higher education to conceive future mobility and transport design practice in extreme scenario.

The complexity of contemporary society and mobility imposes the rethinking or adaptation of well-established ways of designing products, services and infrastructures which are no longer effective in supporting or tackling systemic and sustainability provisions or problems. Concurrently, developing experiential learning in this regard is required to adopt novel teaching methods and strategies in higher education, enabling students’ effective collaboration and co-creation whilst supporting their design thinking and skills formation. This paper sets out to critically reflect on collaborative, research-based, and industry-informed integrated approaches to higher education through two distinct, but complementary project case studies, developed respectively at Northumbria University and the Politecnico di Milano. An analysis is provided to illustrate how students approach projects through design (thinking) and innovation methods alongside their developmental skills, which are used to deal with complexity, and propose well thought-out solutions. The two case studies explore future mobility scenarios where autonomous vehicles (AVs) are enabled by artificial intelligence (AI) to either respond to extreme situations (the first case study) or ensure inclusion and accessibility for impaired users (the second case study). Key design and educational considerations are derived from an evaluation of how technologies and development methodologies may enable graduates to proactively face the challenges of the fast-evolving transportation design sector.