Author: Stephen Potter
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Redesigning cities and transport systems
Over the last few years, I have posted here a number of blogs around the design of innovative public transport systems. These have included reinventing the tram, self-driving buses, new types of public transport through to ticketing systems that don’t require a dozen apps and an IT diploma to use. One theme that has emerged…
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A gripping tale of good design
When in 1987 I joined the OU’s Design Department (as it then was called) it was to work with Robin Roy in the Design Innovation Group (DIG) on a project to evaluate the commercial impacts of the Design Council’s Funded Consultancy Programme. Under this, SMEs were awarded a grant to employ a design consultant to…
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Designing away digital mess
Have you ever found yourself frustrated by how complex and messy our digital society has made what were previously quite simple tasks? Take paying for parking your car. Once there were simple cash ticket machines (or even someone in a cabin at the entrance). Pay, display the ticket; job done. Now there may still be…
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The designerly dance of the electric vehicle chargers
Just before lockdown, I and my colleagues Matt Cook and Miguel Valdez were involved in a research bid in response to an Innovate UK call to address the problem of on-street charging for electric vehicles. EV take-up had been predominantly by people who could charge their cars in their drive or garage. For others, charging…
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1974 and all that……
I am writing this blog on the 1st October 2024. For me, this is an odd sort of anniversary, for it was on 1st October 1974 (i.e. exactly 50 years ago) that I formally joined the Open University. I know there are others still present in our Design Group who preceded me (Robin Roy, Dave…
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Back to the Future: can we nurture transformational design?
A few months ago, I was asked by the journal of the Town and Country Planning Association to write a short article as part of the TCPA’s 125th anniversary. Back in 1898 the TCPA was instrumental in promoting the Garden Cities/New Towns concept and today remains a forum for more radical thinking in urban and…
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Lessons from a Santaless Sleigh
Having been asked to provide a Design Blog just ahead of Christmas, I wondered how I might combine this yuletide timing with my design research. I have been working on both research and teaching pieces that explore the product, service and system design impacts of emerging electric and autonomous vehicle technologies. That’s not very Christmassy.…
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Contemplating the Future of Public Transport
Miguel Valdez and Matt Cook and I have been asked to write an article for The Conversation on ‘The Future of Public Transport’ and I am grappling with the draft text at this very moment. It’s not that we haven’t been doing very relevant research on the design of transport systems and their implications, but…
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Designing Intelligent Mobility
This week I received a long-awaited early Christmas present. My Design Group colleagues, Matthew Cook, Miguel Valdez, James Warren and I had written a chapter entitled Towards an Intelligent Mobility Regime in the second edition of the Elsevier book Intelligent Environments. As often happens for a major internationally co-authored publication, this has been almost…
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My Design@50 Research story
Last month, Jeff Johnson and I were interviewed in the online event OU Design Research @50. In the discussion, ably steered by Claudia Eckert, Jeff and I reflected on how design research has developed at the OU and what is distinctive about the OU’s design research approach. I thought for this blog it might be useful…