Intelligent Mobility

The programme will deploy a range of teaching/learning strategies to build skills at a number of levels during the MA as follows:

• Personally directed study will be encouraged during the programme and will be a focus for the IRP as part of the strategic/ideological goals of the programme. Such study will be guided by tutors through regular personal and group tutorials as below.
• Personal tutorials will be used to explore and challenge students' attitudes and knowledge about their work in context between individual students and their tutor.
• Group tutorials will be used to debate issues across student cohorts and tutors and to examine ideas at depth.
• Group seminars will be used to provide a range of contextual and ideological knowledge to students on the programme.
• Group workshops and skills training will be used to build key skills in a range of areas during the programme. Typical examples include: specialist CAD training, research skills workshops, bespoke short skills projects.
• Individual interim project presentation and reviews (non-examined) will be used to assess and debate students work during projects - leading to verbal and written feedback being given.
• Final examinations will be used to critically appraise work and provide feedback by an examination board on work submitted for a unit.

Term 1

• People and places: This unit provides a framework to understand how and where future mobility fits into a changing global landscape and how people and place connect through mobility. The unit aims to sensitise you to the scope and limits of different mobility typologies within the mobility mix and highlights the need for design to meet broader infrastructural and social requirements.
• Humanising technology: This unit aims to explore how recent transformational mobility technologies such as autonomy and electrification can be interpreted to provide new and desirable human interactions in mobility. You are expected to gain a profound and critical understanding of emerging technologies and their place in future mobility design.

Term 2

• Automotive transitions: This unit focuses on the future of the automotive typology and asks you to reimagine how technology and social trends will influence future automotive design. The unit provides a deep context into the key elements of future automotive design with an emphasis on advanced manufacturing, contemporary socio-cultural issues and questions related to future business models.
• Grand Challenge: In term 2 all School of Design students will participate in the Grand Challenge, School-wide unit. The aim of this unit is to connect and challenge all students in the School through the introduction of a ‘wicked’ design problem that requires a cross disciplinary approach to problem solving which may involve external international partners. This unit and lecture series has been hugely successful in connecting and disrupting disciplines, people, philosophies and approaches to design thinking whilst providing our student body with very unique networking opportunities.

Terms 1 and 2

Across terms 1 and 2, you will participate in AcrossRCA.

Term 3

Independent Research Project: This is the final Master’s project and asks students to identify, develop and address a defined research question which is both socially relevant and technically challenging. The work must be documented at all stages for public dissemination. This will take the form of a physical and/or digital (virtual) exhibition of a selection of the students work during their 3 terms. You are responsible for the intellectual and technical evolution of this project and for leading the research and development of ideas and insights through different stages of the design process. This includes working out who the stakeholders are, how to research and the development of thinking through different media; notably from 2D to 3D and to an appropriate level of resolution. The scope of the IRP will be agreed with you, and the support of your tutor and will include the following:

• a clearly articulated research question or problem.
• a defined rationale for the scope of the project including a perspective from the identified global opportunity and the students’ personal skills and motivations.
• a plan/methodology for the development of the work.
• a fully resolved vision of the work in appropriate media and a clear evidence path which has all the necessary elements of research to underpin the logic reasoning and creative decisions to narrate the IRP student journey.

AcrossRCA is a compulsory 30-credit unit which is delivered as part of all MA programmes.

Situated at the core of your RCA experience, this ambitious interdisciplinary College-wide unit supports you in responding to the challenges of complex, uncertain and changing physical and digital worlds. Developed in response to student feedback, AcrossRCA creates an exciting opportunity for you to collaborate meaningfully across programmes.

Challenging you to use your imagination and intellect to respond to urgent contemporary themes, this ambitious unit will provide you with the opportunity to:

• make connections across disciplines
• think critically about your creative practice
• develop creative networks within and beyond the College
• generate innovative responses to complex problems
• reflect on how to propose ideas for positive change in local and/or global contexts

AcrossRCA launches with a series of presentations and panel discussions from acclaimed speakers who will introduce the themes and act as inspirational starting points for your collaborative team response.

Delivered online and in-person across two terms, the unit has been designed to complement your disciplinary studies and to provide you with a platform to thrive beyond graduation.