Looking Out #21
The Bronco and being a queer car person, micromobility and 15-minute cities, the fall of Nespresso and the rise of Covid consumerism, and more Renault Espace.
6th August, 2020
A newsletter about the auto industry, mobility, design, and the cultures that surround us. Brought to you by Joe Simpson and Drew Smith of The Automobility Group. If you like what you see, tell your friends!
Auto
Bronco: Re-thinking the process of car design | JS
Why it’s interesting: Ford has gone big on a human-centred design process for the re-launch of one of its most significant nameplates. And it’s been led from the top.
Call any car designer a stylist, and they’ll bristle. Despite the fact that in some car companies the design department is still internally named with the ‘s’ word, car designers passionately believe that what they do, isn’t just about making something look pretty. I’m not going to offend hundreds of colleagues, friends and contacts in the industry by suggesting that they’re lying. Many a successful car design has been conceived – from a product planning, positioning and branding perspective – within the design department. Designers don’t just ‘style’ – that implies they make things look pretty at the end of a process. Which if you’ve worked in the industry you’ll know is rubbish.
But nonetheless car design does tend to follow a fairly formulaic development process, one which often begins with a sketch, and for much of the gestation of a car, is centred around the refinement of the exterior aesthetics.
When Ford designed the new Bronco, they did something different. For years, Ford has retained IDEO to work with it on projects that employ a human-centred design approach. And Ford has now set up a separate unit called D-Ford, which is charged with conducting design research and really driving forward a human-centred design approach within the company. However it’s not been until current CEO – Jim Hackett – who took over in 2017, that human centred design took centre stage.
Both the new F150 and the recently-released Bronco are products of a human-centred design process, which puts the user centre stage, questions traditional car dogmas and has resulted in some big changes to the traditional car design process – as the pictures I’ve used to illustrate this article show. The focus has moved away from the refinement of clays, with designers working with rough foam prototypes, story boards, VR and much more.
Of course, Ford could have just designed a good-looking Bronco and - given how long the nameplate has been off-sale – probably have guaranteed themselves good sales. But a user-centred design process saw the team deeply studying how the car would likely be used in the real world, getting to know potential owners and what they do, and questioning everything that was on the car. That – in concert with developing interior, exterior, colour and materials together - created opportunities to developing a design that is likely to do a better job of meeting its users’ needs, and exceeding their wildest dreams.
It’s easy to get lost in the features – the doors can be taken off and stored within the vehicle, there’s a drain plug in the floor, a bottle opener, a rig to mount smart phones and cameras, etc - but that somehow does a disservice to the bigger process rethink, and holistic sense of functionality you get from this car. To that end, those features are likely to both boost its initial showroom appeal, but the way they work and are used once someone becomes an owner are what matter. They are likely to make those who do buy a Bronco happier, too, and more likely to return to Ford when the time comes to change.
The design team, overseen by Moray Callum, and led by Paul Wraith and Chris Svensson, who is sadly no longer with us, deserve huge credit. You can read more about the process here and here. But the charge for the human-centred design approach came from the man at the top, Jim Hackett. Business Insider’s profile of the CEO is worth a read, both to understand the flack he’s taken from the stock market for his approach to date, but also why this move might be the game-changer, that keeps Ford in the race as others fall away. It’s an approach which if I were a car company boss, I’d be studying very closely indeed.
STOP PRESS: As we were set to hit the publish button on this issue of Looking Out, Ford announced it would replace retiring CEO Jim Hackett.
Images: Ford Motor Company
On being queer in the car industry | DS
Why it’s interesting: it’s personal, this one. But I hope that opening up a conversation can open hearts, minds and ambitions, too.
Working as an openly queer person in the automotive industry has been a curious thing.
During my first stint, my sexuality was the subject of the occasional wink-wink, nudge-nudge joke, the kind you used to see in Carry On movies. Desperate for approval and, quite frankly, a job, I laughed along at the expense of my dignity and self-respect.
Happily, during my second stint, among my mostly white, mostly middle-class, mostly male, and almost entirely straight colleagues, mention of my boyfriend or previous marriage to a man was mostly the subject gentle curiosity rather than anything more malign.
However, I can’t lie: the world of automotive design is still not the easiest place for anyone that doesn’t fit the pale, (cishet) male and (soon to be) stale archetype that has tended to define a successful career path.
One only need to look at the under-representation of women or people of colour in visible senior design positions, the often-patronising lip service paid to womens’ contributions (the launch comms for the last BMW Z4 for example), or the fact that many in the industry still chose not to disclose their sexuality for fear of disadvantage, to know that something is amiss.
Ours is not an easy field to get in to, and once you’re in, it’s not easy to be different. I would dearly love for that to change.
Happily, there are queer car-loving and car-designing voices out there, like Toni Scott, a transgender femme car enthusiast, writer and photographer. Their fierce love for car culture and fearlessness in speaking out for LGBT car enthusiasts was the inspiration for writing this piece, and their writing is well worth your time.
Then there’s Brian Thompson, formerly of Nissan Design America and now freelance. He’s established a scholarship fund for LGBT students to attend the College for Creative Studies.
And I also want to give a shout out to Helen Wakerly, who works for high-end car dealer H. R. Owen. She keeps my Twitter feed stocked with images of the delicious metal she finds on her walks around London, and also pointed me in the direction of my new car.
Our continued strength as a profession depends on our diversity of experience, perspective and creativity and we can address this on a many levels. We can make design education attractive and accessible. We can advocate for, establish and expand diversity initiatives in car companies. And I can share and celebrate the stories of folk like Toni and Brian and Helen, in the hope that it will encourage others to share stories of their own.
Pair with Toni’s pieces on being a queer car enthusiast here and here.
Mobility
The entire Micromobility sector in one chart | JS
Why it’s interesting: Trying to make sense of the players and protagonists in the micromobility space? This is your go-to.
Horace Dideu’s Micromobility Industries have produced this chart, detailing all of the 303 key players - from hardware builders, to software providers, platforms and data governors that are playing in the Micromobility (e-bikes and e-scooter) landscape. Note the lack of car companies…
Link to high-resolution, downloadable chart from Google Drive here.
Link to Micromobility original article and explainer here.
I now live in a 15-minute city | DS
Why it’s interesting: Lockdown has me rethinking London and my place in it.
Carlos Moreno, a professor of urbanism at the Sorbonne university in Paris and an advisor to the mayor of Paris, Anne Hidalgo, has shot to prominence in the last couple of months with his vision for the city of the future. I’ve started to realise that I’m already living within it.
Rather than the vast, commute-dependent conurbations we have come to know, Moreno promotes the idea of a city in which everything you need to live a fulfilled life is within a 15 minute walk or cycle of your front door.
As my life has shrunk away from my office in London’s Marylebone and my favoured bars and restaurants in Mayfair, Soho and East End, all 30 minutes distant by transit from where I live in Finsbury Park, I’ve become far more intimately acquainted with my local area.
Sure, I knew about the great coffee shop, the best place for brunch, and the grocer’s that does a good line in decently-priced wine. I also knew that if I got sick, the surgical theatre of the Whittington Hospital is close by, as is a theatre of the singing and dancing variety. Should I ever need to educate kids, I’m sure that the school opposite my house would do a decent job.
To this list, I’ve recently added a furniture restorer, a bike shop, a tiny garden centre, an art gallery, and a co-working space, all on my doorstep or near abouts. And the deeper I settle in to my local community and everything it has to offer, the less inclined I am to travel further in to or across London for those same services.
Which, for Moreno, is part of the point. By ensuring that citizens have everything they need within an easy stroll or cycle from home, you reduce the need for both cars and public transit and ease the burden on the environment and the public purse.
It’s also a model that, in focusing on the enhancement and enrichment of local communities, promotes strong social cohesion and interdependency among citizens. Moreno sees this as a vital counter to the hyper-connected but socially disconnected “zombie geeks” (his words, not mine) that we risk becoming in a world of never-ending telework.
And it’s this that has been one of the greatest benefits of my newly-constrained life: I’ve actually got to know the folk that work in my neighbourhood. After years of never feeling quite settled in London, that’s a rather nice feeling.
| JS DS
Design
The rise and meh of Nespresso | DS
Why it’s interesting: the mass-premium pall that’s settled over Nespresso holds lessons for luxury brands that seek volume over value.
As a design-obsessed child of the 1980s, the emergence of Nespresso was cause for much intrigue. I can still remember the arrival at the local department store of the first Richard Sapper-designed machines designed for the emergent aluminium coffee capsule.
Along with Philippe Starck’s Juicy Salif, and Philips’ collaboration on electrical goods with Alessi, the early Nespresso machines were part of a movement that saw the quotidian kitchen appliance elevated to a type of domestic sculpture.
In this fantastic piece by Ed Cummings, we get to learn a whole lot more of the fascinating back story of the product. The product guy and the brand guy bitch about who was really responsible for the success of the product, George Clooney is dreamily George Clooney (the brand guy bitches about him, if you can imagine it), and the future of the brand is called in to question (take that, brand guy!).
Amongst all the bitching (there’s a lot), the questions over environmental sustainability and the sourcing of the coffee, there are some fascinating insights in to a market innovator that may be falling victim to Clayton Christensen’s theory of disruptive innovation. In it, he posits that for many incumbents, the disrupter at first will appear quaint, naive or toy-like, possessed of qualities that the incumbent has worked long and hard to stamp out.
In this vein, Nespresso’s spokesperson doubles down on the right-every-time consistency that allowed folk to enjoy something close to cafe quality espresso at home. In the same breath, he acknowledges - perhaps unwittingly - the source of the brand’s future downfall:
““I love small-batch, third-wave coffee, too,” Ranitzsch said, admiring his silos. “The guys with tattoos and beards stirring their beans in Brooklyn. It is artisanal. But here we want consistency.””
But consistency is no longer the hallmark of luxury it once was. In fact, I’d argue that it’s now the mark of mass production and the antithesis of the artisanal, home-made and hand-finished that has come to define luxury in the past decade.
Former Nespresso CEO Jean-Paul Gaillard said of his original respoitioning of Nespresso as a luxury brand:
“I wanted to create the Chanel of coffee, and decided to keep it chic and bobo”
I mean, nothing says chic like Chanel, right?
Changing everything? | JS
Why it’s interesting: Trend-hunter’s top 100 lifestyle trends in July offers a fascinating snap-shot into a Covid-shocked world, and the design and product/service changes that the pandemic is driving
Will things get back to normal? Will it just be a new normal? Are you sick of reading things like this yet? I know I am, and yet I am fascinating by the potential impact that Covid-19 is having and will continue to have on a number of things. From the future of cities, to the future of work and travel, the impacts continue to snowball.
As a snap shot in time, Trend-hunter’s 100 lifestyle trends for July offers a fascinating (perhaps morbidly so) insight into how the world of electronics, design and fast-moving consumer goods is responding to Covid-19 and the world it’s creating.
Stand outs?
92: Huawei’s Honor 4 – with in-built human thermometer
89: Humanoid robot cafe/bar servers
66: Touchless beauty testers
59: Pop-up desk napping tents
48: Anti-contact door openers
25: Luxury converted camper buses
9: Workout friendly face masks
It’s worth a read, even if it’s just for a giggle at the absurdity of some of it. At least, in 2019 I would have said it was absurd. In the here and now of 2020, I’m not so sure
Culture
I just can’t get enough Espace | DS
Why it’s interesting: not content with valorising the Espace in type, I devoted the most recent episode of The Next Billion Cars to its spacious charms.
Throughout 2019, I was contributing to a podcast called The Next Billion Cars, created by the amazing futurist Mark Pesce, and his inventrix sidekick Sally Dominguez.
Over the course of 10 episodes, we explored the future of the car, and I got to interview folk like Chris Bangle, Mate Rimac and Jay Rogers, the guy that wants to 3D print a car. We even dedicated an episode to our utopian and dystopian visions of the car industry to come.
A few weeks back, we got the band back together to explore what’s been happening in the industry in the first fractious months of 2020.
And yes, I spoke about the Espace, while Sal explored the emergence of a new kind of tech-fuelled van culture in California and Mark reflected on how our hometown of Sydney’s changed for better and for worse for cyclists.
Take a listen to episode 11, and if your interest is piqued, there’s another 10 to work your way through.
Hans Monderman on rethinking streets and public spaces | JS
Why it’s interesting: Worth a re-watch of this hour long lecture, by the celebrated Dutch traffic engineer who invented the shared space
Of course I should arguably have put this in mobility or design, but there is something about this that is deeply cultural. Hans Monderman is the Dutch traffic engineer who came up with shared spaces, and the concept of taking away road signage, markings and separating people and traffic with level changes and kerbs. As we consider the use of cities, and how we move around in them and use their space in the future, it’s well worth a re-watch of this lecture from 2015. Thanks to Lorenzo Wood for the link to this video.
That's it for this issue. We love feedback (positive and negative), and to answer any questions you have. So email Joe or Drew and we’ll get back to you.
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