Research Associate & Director, Future Mobility Design Lab at Digital Futures
Growing up in Bogotá, Colombia, it used to take Alejandro 15 minutes to ride the bus to school in the morning but a full 2 hours to return home during rush-hour traffic. He has always been fascinated by the untapped potential of our cities and believes that now is the most exciting time to be an Industrial Designer.
Alejandro is currently the Director of the Future Mobility Design Lab at the University of Cincinnati’s brand-new Digital Futures initiative, where he partners with other multi-disciplinary researchers and industry to co-create innovative proposals that address real-world opportunities and improve the quality of life through mobility. He is also a lead Industrial Design faculty in the Future Mobility Design program at the college of DAAP and partners regularly with companies such as Gravity Sketch to develop new workflows for Design Education.
Alejandro has worked with companies such as Boeing in aviation, with multiple patents filed and the International Crystal Cabin Award earned. Other companies include Steelcase, Crown Equipment, Uptown Consortium, Toyota Boshoku, Hankook, Ford, GM, and Stellantis.
As an Industrial Designer and Researcher, Alejandro has found his calling right between Industry and Academia.
Adapting to Train Next Generation Designers
Right now is one of the most exciting and disruptive moments in the history of Industrial Design. Our world is becoming more inter-connected than ever, cities are becoming smart, and it seems like every product we buy is connected to the internet of things. What about Artificial intelligence, hyper-connectivity, autonomous vehicles, living in virtuality, and a shared economy? We can go on and on about how our world is becoming increasingly complex.
As Industrial Designers, we take pride in our craft and our ability to apply a process to a problem and come out the other way with a solution. However, our world is rapidly changing, requiring us to innovate and acknowledge emerging trends and technologies such as Virtual and Augmented Reality.
What does this mean for the next generation of professionals that will go out into the workforce in the next few years? How do you balance learning the craft of what makes an Industrial Designer and learn to be curious and adaptable towards emerging technologies? How do you approach the hugely complex problems of our time and ensure our designs intend to improve people’s lives?
These are a few of the challenges we face today in Design Education across the world.
This session will address how Design Education is changing, given the growing complexities of our world and the emergence of new technologies.
Several case studies and examples will be drawn from the Future Mobility Design Program at the University of Cincinnati, and its new multi-disciplinary research initiative of Digital Futures.
In this session, you will learn
