The increasing application of “design thinking” to transportation and clean-energy challenges could help reshape the future of the two sectors in B.C.
“Design thinking is common in Scandinavian countries,” said Mari Nurminen, “and is starting to be used in North America by companies like Apple, although it’s not as common in service industries.”
The senior adviser of strategic planning for Powertech Labs, a BC Hydro clean energy consulting and testing company that targets electricity and auto industries, is passionate about design thinking.
“Clean transportation is growing fast,” said Nurminen. “Our direct customers are B2B, but we want to discover their consumers’ needs, challenges and barriers to adopting new technology.”
Design thinking is collaborative and includes a designer who works with engineers, developers, marketers and consumers to generate a variety of solutions. This led to a partnership between Powertech and the Emily Carr University of Art and Design.
The university organizes teams of design researchers to work on societal problems with companies. According to Rob Inkster, Emily Carr’s associate vice-president of research and industry liaison, Powertech is an excellent applied research partner and a good example of the kind of company the university likes to partner with on research projects.
“Industrial design is an outdated term of thinking about designing things that could be manufactured in mass quantities,” said Louise St. Pierre, Emily Carr’s assistant dean, product and interaction, design and dynamic media.
“In the last 10 years, industrial design has morphed into a broader definition of thinking about things that are not even tangible. We’re more concerned with the bigger picture. In the business world, design thinking can be used in everyday processes and in the product services system.”
Last summer, Nurminen invited Emily Carr research co-op students James Hallam and Sarah Bailey to Powertech Labs. They worked closely with engineers and conducted consumer research to come up with new ways to make electric- vehicle travel more feasible.
“We only have research labs onsite, so we created a designer lab space; a first for the company,” said Nurminen. “There was an open-door policy so engineers could drop in and see how things were going and comment on their progress.”
Added Hallam, “We noticed the user experience was missing, which influenced the outcome of success. Previous launches of electric cars failed before.”
Customer fears showed that “range anxiety” is a main roadblock to electric-car sales. Electric cars currently reach between 120 and 150 kilometres before they need to be recharged, which can take up to eight hours. Users had to weigh the benefits of whether an electric car is better for the environment against the fact that they can’t drive where or when they want to.
“By understanding user experience, we helped Powertech understand a new market,” said Hallam. “If a business wants to innovate they need to find new ways to do things.”
In the fall, Powertech shared its research findings with St. Pierre’s class, whose focus was “Clean motion: changing the way we travel.”
Students were presented with the same class challenge: how to make transportation cleaner and more sustainable?
“The students came up with eight great concepts that we presented to our board of directors,” said Nurminen. “They were excited about the partnership and possibilities of design thinking using the out-of-the-box process.”
Each concept had its own merits. They ranged from a hydrogen station that doubled as a community garden to a rest-and-recharge plan for travellers on the Trans-Canada Highway who could charge their cars in just 30 minutes at rest stops while enjoying nature.
“Design thinking offers four key benefits: differentiation, improved financial performance, usability and sustainability,” said Nurminen. “Eighty per cent of a product’s carbon footprint can be solved in the design stage.”
“People tend to think that creative activities mean designers go off and create, when in actuality they have a back-and-forth dialogue with the client,” said St. Pierre. “When a client becomes part of the process, the solution is relevant to their needs.”
This summer, two new Emily Carr co-op students will be at Powertech Labs as the company examines new ways to structure the job of an in-house designer that can be applied to any project.