FoodPop

A futuristic concept of an autonomous barbecue delivery car.
Role

Industrial Design
Strategy

Company

Renault
(At California College of the Arts)

Duration

4 months (2016)

Team

Aditi Magal, Judy Leung, William Chan, Isamu Taguchi, Lingfeng Hua

Prompt

Renault sponsored our team to design a futuristic autonomous car concept.

Research

We visited Stanfords Automotive research center and learnt about autonomous cars.

Ideation

We ideated and brainstormed concepts by sketching and creating physical prototypes.

Concept

An autonomous car that can go anywhere to deliver barbecues as a service.

Final Prototype

A full scale mockup of the concept made out of wood, foam, paint, etc.

Outcomes

We presented our concept to executives at Nissan Research Center in Silicon Valley.
PROMPT

Renault sponsored our Industrial design class and asked us to imagine a world with completely autonomous cars.

We were given a car (Twizy) to test out our concept. We broke down the car to just it’s chassis to build a full scale model of our concept FoodPop.

RESEARCH

Since self-driving cars are not fully autonomous yet, we decided to visit the center for automotive research at Stanford to learn more about this futuristic technology. We also talked to the team of engineers at Renault working on autonomous vehicles.

Through secondary research we learnt more about the technology Stanford and Renault plan to use for their autonomous vehicles. Using this we approximated the placement of five different equipment - LIDAR (blue), Long Distance Camera (Green), SRCamera (Orange), Ultrasonic seniors (Red), LD Radar (Yellow).

IDEATION

To think about the future context our design would occupy, my team and I preempted the future we would be designing for by world building, and creating a narrative for our autonomous car project.

The Seamless Future: Omniscient Data :  High Infrastructure In the Seamless Future we are completely connected to the city and the city is connected to us. When we move through the city, transport and pathways are timed for our arrival and optimized for your destination. It’s a future where getting lost is an impossibility.

The Neighborhood: Limited Data :  Low Infrastructure Autonomous vehicles make longer commutes a time of relaxation rather than frustration. Suburban and community centered lifestyles have become very desirable. Even though many in these pleasant burroughs benefit from technology they value face to face interaction and community. 

To design a future service that employs autonomous cars, we went through multiple sketching sessions. Our initial brainstorming was broad with crazy ideas...

Video Game Car

Swimming Pool Car

Sleeping Pod


Thinking of alternate ways to spend your time commuting to work, school, ect- Playing video games in your car, Using a swimming pool or Just sleeping on the way to work!

From all these concepts, we chose to center our idea on food. That’s something people can always get on board with. We focused on the idea of simplifying the process of making food, while keeping it communal.

The idea of FoodPop emerged.

CONCEPT

An autonomous car that delivers a barbecue station anytime, anywhere.

FoodPop can work in any space: driveways, parking lots or large scale events.

We thought carefully about the space available in the twizy (car).

FINAL PROTOTYPE

We built a full scale mockup of our concept with wood, foam, paint, etc. so we could visualize it fully.

An autonomous barbacue car that maximizes fun!

OUTCOME

My team and I presented our findings to some executives from Nissan at Silicon Valley. Our prototype was displayed at the Nissan Research Center in Silicon Valley for a week.

KEY TAKEAWAYS
Designing for the future: The future is immense and it’s hard to predict what technology can enable. As a designer I learnt to reimagine the use of technology to change the way we live and work.
Making assumptions about technology: Our concept was built on technology that doesn’t fully exist yet. This means our design is built on a lot of assumptions and guesses we made after intensive research. While building concepts it is important to build on research instead of getting caught up with what exists today.