People in Transit
IO-MI-202
How to design mobility means that are meaningful within society that address both individual and collective concerns? How to design seamless mobility, while preserving the underlaying functional and emotional values of individual mobility? In other words, how to balance individual wants and collective needs? These fundamental questions dictate a multidisciplinary and holistic design approach. We do this by following a context driven design process, as the underlayer of this minor.

Faculty of Industrial Design Engineering
ECs: 30
Language: English
Maximum participants: 30
Non-selection minor: | |
Selection minor: | ![]() |
We aim for a balance between students from the designing faculties, LR, 3ME, BK, IDE and TM. |
Education methods
Projects, lectures, exercisesFor whom?
University students from the 'designing and engineering' faculties from universities of Technology, i.e. Industrial Design, Aerospace Engineering, Automotive or Mechanical Engineering and Architecture. Applications from Technology Management (TBM) are also being considered.
Considering the vast challenges that human mobility faces today we need students, who don’t only want to learn to design new mobility means as such, but who are also interested in understanding why those new designs are of meaning for users and society as a whole. Affinity with human mobility helps and curiosity is a must!
What will you learn?
The minor People in Transit is the evolution of the minor Automotive Design. The encompassing mobility domain is more complex and challenging than it ever has been, both from an internal as from an external perspective. It is because of the latter that we can no longer regard automotive design, or that of any other transport modality, solely in its own right.
This autonomous programme provides knowledge on automotive and mobility design and technology, and an understanding thereof in specific societal contexts. Because of the complexity of the human mobility domain and the high level of design execution in mobility-design, all knowledge, insights and experience derived from this minor, are applicable and valuable in other complex systems and domains.
- You will learn how to design new meaningful products in the field of mobility. Products can be new policies and services, new vehicles in the widest possible sense, and the mobility system that incorporates all these entities.
- You will learn how to work with a context driven design process.
- Develop skills to visualize ideas appropriately throughout the design process, and to visually express all knowledge derived from that design process, through hand-sketching and digital visualization techniques. You will understand their respective roles and values in multidisciplinary design teams.
- Learning secondary skills like design project management and presenting your work in a professional manner, both verbally and visually.
- You will understand the merits and the value of design research and participate in research projects.
- Working in international and multidisciplinary project teams some projects, while other projects are individual.
- You may not always find yourself in your comfort zone
Course overview
Students execute three project courses, which growing in depth, width and weight, from automotive styling and technology to the design of an integrated mobility system. Those three projects together are framed by and structured through the context driven design process Vision in Design. Together they are one full walk-through of this context driven design process. Necessary knowledge is acquired through lectures and research. Necessary skills are being developed in parallel
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This guiding course, which runs throughout the program, is HUMAN MOBILITY. This course frames the three project courses, safeguarding their coherence and connection. Lectures address context driven design, design project management and program coherence. Students compose their own reader, which is their final individual deliverable in this minor.
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AUTOMOTIVE STYLING is the first individual project. The emphasis is on the quality of the manifestation, the outer-skin of the car. How do people perceive and value the styling of a car? This first project aims at understanding the complexity of the current state of automotive design, i.e. the styling of automobiles. The goal is to understand automotive design ‘language’ and the ‘level of expertise’ that is required to be able to communicate with and fulfil a role within the field of automotive design. Lectures include aesthetics, branding and aerodynamics. This first, individual, project encompasses the restyle of an existing vehicle.
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In the second ‘inside-out’ team project AUTOMOTIVE TECHNOLOGY students design vehicles that enable people to fulfil their mobility needs in a meaningful way, in a specific context and for the short-term future. Product-user interaction is investigated qualitatively as much as quantitatively. Lectures include ergonomics, safety, vehicle dynamics, technology and structures, package design and near future developments such as car sharing and autonomous driving. The outcome of this project is the design of a full vehicle package, and its reflection on the styling, i.e. the coherence between ‘under the skin’ requirements and styling.
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In the third and final project MOBILITY SYSTEMS DESIGN the previous projects come together in the design of a long-term future mobility system design. It starts from the idea that every specific context triggers specific end-user behaviour. Ethical choices on sustainability and inclusion help the designer understand how to take a stand, and which behaviour is appropriate. Newly designed mobility means, bringing together technology, usability and styling, will elicit what the designer wants to accomplish with and for people. All learning in the previous projects falls into place. Lectures include the taxonomy of human goals, design for emotion, mobility systems (policies, services and products), safety, sustainability and the build environment. This final project kicks off in small teams, researching a future context and designing an integrated mobility system. After the team phase, each team member individually designs a full vehicle for that specific future context.
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Automotive skills
AUTOMOTOVE SKILLS Involves sketching and drawing, CAD modelling, prototyping, animation, VR as a design tool and the interaction between all of those. It runs in parallel with the project courses for the duration of the minor. The intensive exercises are related to the projects.
Register for this minor
Minors of the faculty of Industrial Design Engineering are open only for students from academic programmes in the third year of their Bachelor studies.
In addition to your registration (Osiris or International Office), please send a brief motivation to automotivedesign-io@tudelft.nl including a description and a representative image of an (of the shelf) project that you are proud of. This should represent your thinking, design or engineering skills. It does not have to be a mobility related project.
Contact

Elmer van Grondelle
- +31 (0)15 27 89488
- automotivedesign-io@tudelft.nl
- Publications
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Room C-3-220
"I am not here to teach you. You are here for my entertainment."