What would convince you to become a carsharing customer? Would you be convinced if you would become a greater involvement regarding the equipment of the cars? Is an improved cleanliness of the vehicles for you a great argument? If you are a passionate bicycle rider: How can we help you to carry out a spontaneous shopping without having to use a car?In the student development project ProVIL - Product development in a Virtual Idea Laboratory, 48 students of the master program in mechanical engineering at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) address these and many other questions.
Their aim is to shape the world of car-sharing and the private transportation of goods of tomorrow. On Thursday, July 6, 2017, they presented their intermediate results to an international committee in the context of the third project milestone in a web conference. The committee consisted of representatives from Centro Ricerche de Fiat (CRF, Turin), Bax & Company (B&C, Barcelona), TU Darmstadt and Karlsruhe University of Applied Sciences (HsKA). In parallel to the project milestone, the eight development teams also carried out a so-called sounding board. The teams presented their respective results and gave each other feedback. The sounding board method helps to improve the structure of the feedback, thereby increasing efficiency.
Both the feedback from the international experts as well as the feedback from the other development teams were very positive and have the potential to be implemented in the future. As project leader, Benjamin Walter emphasized: "The co-creation approach of Agile Systems Design, which we consistently implement in ProVIL, provides students with the latest development and innovation methods. This helps them to develop product concepts with a high potential for innovation in a brief time."
Background: ProVIL - Product development in a Virtual Idea Laboratory is a student development project, which has recently been offered by the IPEK Institute for Product Development at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) as a practical internship in the summer semester. ProVIL works as pilot project in the EU project Science2Society evaluating potentials of co-creation for boosting innovation potential in times of globalisation and digitalisation.
