My Role
Research Lead · Persona Design · Prototyping
Type
Accenture-Partnered Brief · NDA
Tools
Figma · Fusion 360 · Blender · DALL-E · GPT-3
50+
User Interviews Conducted
Top 10
Shortlisted from Cohort
SDG 11
Primary Goal Addressed
00 Context
Sustainable mobility for a city that didn't exist yet.
During my exchange semester at BESIGN in Europe, I joined a multidisciplinary team for an Accenture-partnered brief. The challenge: design an urban mobility experience that reinforces human connection across a city, meeting UN Sustainable Development Goal 11 (Sustainable Cities and Communities).
The brief was deliberately speculative. There was no existing product to redesign, no current user base to study. I had to find the real problem before I could start solving it.
🌍
SDG 11: Sustainable Cities and Communities. The brief asked us to design for a future urban mobility ecosystem that reinforces human connection, not just movement.
Sustainable Development Goals addressed
SDG 3
Good Health & Wellbeing
Allow a safe, pleasant and inclusive experience in the city for all destinations.
SDG 7
Affordable Clean Energy
The devices create their own energy, allowing them to be totally autonomous and independent.
SDG 10
Reduced Inequalities
An inclusive transport experience adapted for all, allowing every citizen to feel legitimate in its use.
SDG 11
Sustainable Cities
A global and complete movement in the city that becomes more sustainable and interconnected.
SDG 13
Climate Action
An almost total elimination of individual fuel transport to reduce pollution and move towards soft mobility.
SDG 17
Partnerships for Goals
Regroup the different lines and transport groups to make them interact and build a mobility system together.
01 Research
50+ interviews. One clear divide.
I led primary user research: 50+ interviews across different age groups, mapping how people experience urban mobility in their daily lives. I also ran secondary research to ground the speculative brief in real behavioral patterns and policy context.
"The insight wasn't about transport. It was about trust. Different generations had completely different relationships with it."
01
Older users prioritise reliability and predictability
Missed connections, unpredictable wait times, and lack of real-time information were primary pain points. They wanted systems they could plan around. Mobility as infrastructure, not experience.
02
Younger users prioritise identity and spontaneity
Gen Z and millennials wanted mobility options that felt like an extension of themselves: flexible, multimodal, and socially legible. They didn't want to plan; they wanted to move.
03
A single-solution approach would fail both
The standard "universal design" framing couldn't hold both user types. The solution needed to be adaptive. Meeting different people where they are, on the same infrastructure.
02 Design Process
From insight to prototype.
I used the Double Diamond framework: research to define the problem, then diverge and converge on a concept. I contributed to the ideation phase using AI tools (DALL-E and GPT-3) to rapidly generate visual concepts for speculative futures, then translated the strongest ideas into storyboards and physical prototypes.
01
AI-Assisted Ideation
Used DALL-E and GPT-3 to generate 25+ speculative concept images, exploring how urban mobility could look in 2035. One of the earliest uses of AI in our school's design process.
02
Persona-Led Storyboarding
Translated research personas into visual narratives, showing how the proposed mobility concept would be experienced by an older commuter vs. a young urban professional.
03
Physical Prototyping
Built tactile prototypes using Fusion 360 and Blender to make the speculative concept tangible for stakeholder review, grounding the vision in something Accenture could evaluate.
04
Stakeholder Presentation
Presented the final concept to Accenture stakeholders. Received positive feedback on inclusivity, feasibility, and innovative potential. Shortlisted from 10 final submissions.
03 Tools & Skills
How the work was made.
Adobe Illustrator
Figma
Fusion 360
Blender
Sketching
DALL-E · GPT-3
3D Modelling
User Interviews
Persona Creation
Storyboarding
04 Reflection
The most important design skill is asking better questions.
Speculative briefs need grounding in real research. Without the 50+ interviews, we would have designed for a fantasy user. The research gave us permission to be ambitious. The ambition was anchored in something real.
Designing across cultures taught me to check my assumptions twice. Working in a European design school on a global mobility brief meant my own cultural lens was only one data point. Listening more than asserting was the most useful skill I had.
AI tools are most powerful in the diverge phase. Using DALL-E and GPT-3 for ideation in 2022 showed me early that AI accelerates the "what could this be" stage, but judgment about what actually works still comes from research and testing, not generation.
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