Concept cars have long been successfully applied in the automotive industry as a design-led way to envisioning the future. While automotive corporations use this futures technique as a driver for innovation, small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in other industries have not had the benefit of such explorations, largely because concept cars are too resource-intensive and poorly suited to the SMEs’ needs and idiosyncrasies. To democratize this design practice and help SMEs, which are essential to social and economic prosperity, we have developed DIVE: Design, Innovation, Vision, and Exploration. It is a design-led futures technique that assists designers in making and using concept cars –as experimental artefacts that act as visions which embody ideas about the future– as ‘vehicles’ for innovation in SMEs, no longer confined to the automotive sector. Its development began with an inquiry into concept cars in the automotive industry and concept products and services in other industries. We then combined the insights derived from these design practices with elements of the existing techniques of critical design and design fiction into the creation of DIVE’s preliminary first version. This was then applied and evaluated in seven iterations with SMEs, resulting in DIVE’s alpha version. All iterations of DIVE in context show that SMEs can make and use concept cars, tailored to their own domain, to receive some of the benefits of exploring the future using design within the front-end of their innovation strategy. These companies can make concept cars to identify opportunities and threats and to give a sense of direction when they face a significant change. DIVE begins with setting a vision, embedded in an artifact, and then working backward to map a path of ideas, connecting the future to the present. Although the results of these activities might be less flashy than concept cars, these simple prototypes and videos help SMEs internalize and share a clear and concrete image of a preferable future for employees, allies, and investors. Concept cars, prototypes of the future, can also be used at the start of a new product’s design process to combine all the results of investigations on product, market, and technology. Subsequently, it is used to define a design brief and as a criterion to select the most promising ideas. @en

Futures thinking is an important capability to support the sustainability of any kind of organisation. Examples of these techniques are technology roadmapping, a managerial practice used extensively in tech industries, and concept cars, a practice that has long been used by automakers as a design-led way to envisioning future products.@en

Futures techniques have long been used in large enterprises as designerly means to explore the future and guide innovation. In the automotive industry, for instance, the development of concept cars is a technique which has repeatedly proven its value. However, while big companies have broadly embraced futures techniques, small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) have lagged behind in applying them, largely because they are too resourceintensive and poorly suited to the SMEs’ needs and idiosyncrasies. To address this issue, we developed DIVE: Design, Innovation, Vision, and Exploration, a design-led futures technique for SMEs. Its development began with an inquiry into concept cars in the automotive industry and concept products and services in other industries. We then combined the insights derived from these design practices with elements of the existing techniques of critical design and design fiction into the creation of DIVE’s preliminary first version, which was then applied and evaluated in two iterations with SMEs, resulting in DIVE’s alpha version. After both iterations in context, it seems that DIVE suits the SMEs because of its compact and inexpensive activities which emphasize making and storytelling. Although the results of these activities might be less flashy than concept cars, these simple prototypes and videos help SMEs internalize and share a clear image of a preferable future, commonly known as vision. Developing DIVE thus helped us explore how design can support SMEs in envisioning the future in the context of innovation.@en

In the landscape of design research, several techniques of speculative design -or design about ideas- have been positioned, each with a different time frame. Design Fiction and Critical Design, for instance, emerged as making activities that explore the near and the speculative future, respectively. We previously defined Vision Concepts as a design-led technique that explores and communicates speculative futures. Even though Vision Concepts, such as long-term concept cars and products, have been part of the industry since 1938, previous work has failed to identify and understand them from the design research perspective or compared them with other speculative design techniques. This study intends to identify which spot Vision Concepts occupies within the landscape of design research. To that end, we developed a multiple case analysis that includes examples of Vision Concepts, Design Fiction, and Critical Design. This paper will help design researchers identify the similarities and differences between Vision Concepts and the other speculative design techniques and gain knowledge about when and why to apply this technique.@en

Innovation forces organizations to think about the future. The many techniques guiding these explorations are named futures studies, which are inquiries into images of the future and their surrounding elements. Although futures studies help organizations to change, their results are often difficult to interpret, and they frequently fail to involve middle-level managers or the public at large. As design is a future-oriented discipline, it is remarkable that the futures studies and innovation management literature do not cover design-led techniques to boost the innovation process. This paper fills a part of this gap in the extant literature by discussing Concept Cars in the automotive industry, a phenomenon in which design plays a prominent part. Since the first Concept Car, it has become clear that automakers do not make these tangible models to mass-produce and sell them, but they mainly view them as a brand builder. Although Concept Cars are broadly recognized as an interesting phenomenon, little academic work has been conducted on them. This paper discusses Concept Cars as a design led futures technique, and aims to understand their purposes, outcomes, and development process. Our study used multiple methods, including ten interviews with design experts, observations on Concept Cars at a motor-show, and a review of three Concept Cars. We find that Concept Cars help organizations to change through an inquiry into images of the future. Concept Cars offer a design-led approach of researching the future, where visual synthesis, prototyping, and storytelling play an important role. Concept Cars act as probes that simultaneously explore technologies and styling while also communicating a probable, plausible, and preferable future, in one time-horizon. Unlike managerial futures techniques, Concept Cars provide tangible futures that people with different backgrounds can experience, influencing several parties involved in developing an innovation. A Concept Car has two main limitations. The development of a Concept Car is a resource intensive process and results in a single outcome. We conclude that Concept Cars or Concept Products can complement other futures techniques and may also be used by companies operating in other industries when looking for new ways to innovate.@en

After a human-centered design process crucial conditions were identified in the changing-process of development and growing of the European Megacities (overpopulation, limited amount of resources, congestion of infrastructure, penetration of new ITC, etc.) these situations created an ideal scenario for Motio Development to identify design opportunities in order to contribute to the sustainable development.