Scholarly record

THE TRAIN AS A SMART PLATFORM. DESIGN DRIVEN TRANS-DISCIPLINARY RESEARCH IN THE ITALIAN RAIL TRANSPORT SYSTEM

E. Cianfanelli, M. Tufarelli

Abstract

The global transport landscape is generally experiencing a transformative time, likely due to a combination of new technologies and society driven innovations. these changes gradually convert the meaning of products and services related to mobility, altering ex-pectations for the consumer involved in the process [1]. This study intends to describe the processes and design methods used by the DIT lab., a joint laboratory of the DesignCampus of the University of Florence and Trenitalia com-pany s.p.a., which deals with the creation and the proposal of new possibilities together with design-driven strategies in the Italian rail transport system. DIT aimed to structure a trans-disciplinary research area to experiment and combine different design cultures with new materials and technologies. Hence, we believe that through this synergic approach, the laboratory could foster cross-fertilization between culture of design and digital technologies. Inside the laboratory the train is considered as an integrated platform of products and services in which the practices of the design discipline and the application of collabora-tive and participatory processes might improve the quality of interaction between user and product/system [2]. The train becomes a "smart platform”, a combination of interaction and interior spaces that possibly provides connections between the citizens, cities, institutions and things, transforming itself into a territory player [3] [4] that may well be able to provide a picture about places and even give practical information about them. Thus, the user plays a pivotal role in identifying the main features of the product that are in tune with his/her preferences, for this reason a crucial point of the design process is to understand the behavior of users, their needs, motivations and previous experiences.

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