SL LIGHTING

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LIGHTING IN THE AGE OF AUTONOMY
Client
SL CORPORATION
Category
Car Components
year
2018
Skills
Strategy, Research
Country
South Korea

Discovering new product opportunities for an autonomous future

In the future when autonomous vehicles (AVs) are able to reach level 4 and 5 autonomy and no longer need a driver to see the road to drive the car, what are the future needs of automotive lighting?

The stakes couldn’t be higher for SL Lighting, a Tier 1 parts supplier for the likes of GM and Ford, whose future business model relies on shifting to meet the needs of our autonomous future.

SL COrp AV lighting futures
2018
THE BRIEF
001

With the eminent future of autonomous vehicles, the automotive industry is trying to prepare for the oncoming disruption. One question that was top of mind for SL Corp, one of the worlds largest manufacturers of automotive lighting, was why would people want lights on their cars if the cars would be the ones doing the driving?

OUR ROLE
002

Co-creation workshops
User and expert interviews
Client stakeholder workshop
Design thinking
Industrial design concept creation
User experience concept creation

PROCESS
003

Because fully autonomous vehicles don’t exist in the market, our approach to better understanding this future state was consulting with industry experts as well as running co-creation workshops with participants to provide them with the opportunity to articulate what their future use cases could be..

Reseach
004

Through multiple one on one interviews and co-creation workshops with people of all ages, we were able to begin to better understand the latent user needs of people relative to autonomous vehicles. Below are some insightful and inspiring quotes from people who informed the lens of product desirability.

“AVs will have to clearly indicate their intention. A countdown is understood by everybody.”
-Shruti, 45, stay at home mom
“If I know it’s an AV, then I’ll keep my distance and let it do it’s thing”
-Max, 28, Store manager
“If my car cuts somebody off, I want to press a button and give them a bag of chips to say sorry”
-Roy, 27, programmer
“Every single pick-up and drop-off creates a ripple effect amounting to huge delays for everyone in the city.”
-Shawn, 23, Bike courier
“I want my AV to be designed so I can comfortably meditate and do yoga”
-Joyce, 62, retired grandma
STRATEGY
005

After gathering primary and secondary research we synthesized a lot of the key insights and began to see general trends of how different categories of lighting would evolve over time as a result of the introduction of self driving cars.

SL COrp AV lighting futures
2018
OPPORTUNITY EXPRESSION
006

As the technology solution was beginning to take shape we coordinated the production of several appearance models to evaluate color, material and finishes of the devices while also coordinating a photography shoot with a variety of different models in order to begin to visualize how the Link would look and feel on people. These images ended up being utilized by Neuralink for their main media push.

Pictured
model Wearing the N1 Appearance model
PICTURED
ridesharing ID
PICTURED
AUGMENTED TURNING SIGNALS
PICTURED
stop timer
OUTCOME
007

During the project, we ran collaborative workshops with some of SL’s key client stakeholders at GM and Ford to understand their priorities. Armed with a breadth of concepts that had been vetted through different prototyping tools, SL was able to engage with car brands on a deeper level about the future market and evolving customer needs