Ruocong Liu

About

RUOCONG LIU


EDUCATION - MA/Intelligent Mobility

Royal College of Art （2019-present）

BA/Automotive & Transport Design

Coventry University （2016-2019）1st Class (Hons) Graduated


WORKING EXPERIENCE - SAIC Motor, Interior Design （07/21-09/21）

Geely Design Centre, Interior Design （04/21-07/21）

Geely Design Centre, CMF Design （12/20-04/21）

Pan Asia Technical Automotive Centre (06/18-07/18)


AWARDS - SAIC Motor Design Challenge (THIRD Place)

XCMG X-Creators Competition (SECOND Place)

Incentive Scholarship in Coventry University


Looking forward to researching human-oriented automotive design, design strategy and processes research, combining my experience in design with research about cultural and social behaviour, using my skill set to solve problems, to cooperating with different car industries.

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Statement

The content of this project was related to the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei integration. It is a policy for adjusting and optimising the layout and spatial structure of the urban transportation network within cities surrounding Beijing, building a modern system to expand the ecological space of environmental capacity, and allowing people working in Beijing to live a more comfortable life.

Modern city and this policy appeal to lots of people who move and lived in the city surrounding Beijing and have a daily commute from the place they lived to the centre of Beijing city, which is where they worked. Every day, 4.8 million people spend more than 2 hours per way commuting from home to work. 

The city only carries people's survival needs, which causes people to have no sense of belonging to this place they could call 'home'. and also no social and leisure time because of the long daily commute.

But this is the city where I was born and studied for most of my life, and this design is what I want to help families and friends like me and live in the city I loved, and it is my imagination for a better future in a mobility design aspect.


Concept，Scenario and Inspiration

Content
Content
Persona
Persona — The city only carries people's survival needs, but also causes people to have no sense of belonging, the problem with commuting by car is always the Security checks, which every province and city in China has. It usually spends 1 hr each way on average just waiting inside the queue for the check to go to work in Beijing. that means that they have less time both physically and psychologically to build up a sense of safety and relationships to integrate into the community.
How can these people be quickly integrated into the city? My solution is to make people comfortable, as they could feel safe and be connected to their community. I hope that people can stay in these cities for not only house prices, salaries and opportunities but also for friendly community and comfort socialising. It is the fastest way to share information, in other words, getting well and adapting to the community and based on the solutions, It is possible to have a more humanized policy by design.
It is people who control their distance to feel comfortable, and then willing to be connected. The way people act to control mostly lead to the culture of etiquette, some the traditional product is created to make people feel comfortable in daily life and easy to have emotional transitions daily. I choose the 'screen' which could keep the distance and make people stay in their comfort zone, which could lead to an equal relationship and be easier converted into conversations when in shared mobility.

System， Research and Experiments

People nowaday using groupchat to connect the people nearby in order to find strangers for car pulling which is low efficiency that you have to find people manually by chatting to strangers online, which could increase the risk not only for an unstable car pulling relationship but also could cause danger. and it would be better if the service could link people together with strong security support, and even with the same interest that could easily be trigger to start conversations.
This service is run by the government and needs true identity using this, so while having a more safety journey without any danger, it could also skip the security check which could save at least one hr per way on their daily commute.
I also create a user journey for this vehicle that I expected, the green dot shows people's positive emotions on the ride and the orange dot was for the negative emotions. people could feel safe from choosing to say what they want to say, and the more information you get from the others, the more safety you will feel. once people start and have a good experience, it will be easy to become a trigger to continue for a new term of the commuting journey.
So I started to experiment to find out about different types of relationship status, what is the most comfortable way of getting along with another person. the questionnaire shows that people have the 3 most important needs while getting along with people in a small space, which are privacy, safety and comfort. and I started to link people that are total strangers and people that already know each other to sit inside the space, to find out their most comfortable positions.
The 3 most important need was also in concern. People inside the space could use the screen to help increase safety and privacy and could move their chairs around to find the most comfortable way. And I found that people in different positions and statuses could lead to the different priorities of these needs.

Storyboard，Package and Output

The storyboard was using the same timeline as people driving a private car and skipping the time for security check, in this cars people could have their own choice to control the space between two of them, and they could choose whether having own private space, lean back to take a snap, or share a large space between two of them, engage for starting to know each other and have a chat.
In the visual research, I try to convey comfort and balanced feeling into the interior, because two passengers should have equal space and relationship inside the vehicle, and also I want to look for a more subtle way which follows the oriental etiquette for people could control the distance politely and naturally without disturbing others.
For having an equal space for two passengers and could control the distance between these two, I thought about using the back of the chair as a shell to separate the space into two private spaces. When people want to engage in conversations, the space of these two people was combined, and when they move the chair to turn away, the space follows the seats separate into two to let the people visually have their own comfort zone to feel safe.
Video