AUB win award in Los Angeles following Passenger workshop

Last year, Passenger delivered a workshop to Arts University Bournemouth BA (Hons) Visual Communication students. The workshop was led by Chris Matthews and Luke Wakeford, who set a design brief to help alleviate issues surrounding transport and navigation in cities. Key points that were raised were around big data, open data, accessibility and emerging tech.

Students were given a week to work on ideas and concepts before coming back to evolve them further with Passenger design team.

The finalised concepts evolved as students were encouraged to look at the market, who would benefit from these products, and how would it resolve a current issue within the transport industry. 

The workshop was completed with elevator pitches from each team. These included Pedal, an app that displays both the quickest and safest route, Miles, a personal travel assistant organising your daily journeys and Notifi, an app that notifies the bus driver at a particular stop that you need assistance.

Richard Hurst, Senior Lecturer of Visual Communication at AUB says:

“Our students really enjoy briefs set by industry professionals and we love working with Passenger who tailor these to relate to real world problems in their field. It’s always great to see how the students respond to these issues, proposing some amazing solutions and Notifi is a great example of this.”

The Passenger team were incredibly impressed with the level of quality and consideration that went into the final concepts. Some ideas taking inspiration from projects Passenger were currently working towards, like Stop The Bus with Nottingham City Transport, a way to alert the driver to stop at a certain bus stop for those unable to physically flag down or stand for the drivers attention.

This was the third workshop held by Passenger in order to help AUB students work within a brief that mimics Passengers real-life ambitions within design and the transport industry, while teaching and mentoring for continual professional development of Passenger.

Chris Matthews, Senior Interface Designer at Passenger says:

“The students we worked with were great and took a lot of what we taught on-board, so it was a pleasure to watch their ideas evolve through the sessions. I think it’s really important to get involved with institutions and universities that are shaping those individuals who will be coming into the industry ambitious to revolutionise design. Who knows, maybe they’ll be working at Passenger someday and become a part of our design-driven technology”

Following this workshop, several students entered their project, Notifi, into the International Design Awards and won the silver award in Los Angeles.