Johnson Controls Jury Members Award Top Projects in Master's Course for Strategic Product Design at Delft University of Technology

BURSCHEID, Germany, March 10 --

- Ideas for Tomorrow's Automotive Interiors

"What makes a brand a brand?" was the theme of this year's design project for master's students in strategic product design at Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands. Together with Johnson Controls, one of the world's leading suppliers of automotive interior systems, electronics and batteries, course professors and a management consultant gave awards for the best graduation project. Fifty students had about three months to become familiar with the brand and product areas of various automakers. The question was: "What could an automotive interior that supports an automaker's brand image look like?"

New stimuli to support brand identity

The jury was particularly impressed with the approaches used to support the automakers' brand identity. The winning group was engaged in developing a recognition feature on the instrument panel that would be typical for a German brand and ensure immediate identification.

Both Johnson Controls and the students at the university benefited from this project in equal measure. "Cooperation is of interest to us," said jury member Han Hendriks, Johnson Controls' Executive Director Marketing & Industrial Design Europe, "because we acquire viewpoints and product ideas for automotive interiors from consumers who otherwise have nothing to do with the automobile industry. That gives us a breath of fresh air and new creative stimuli for product development." This supports the company in its goal of increasing consumers' awareness of the brand identity of each automaker and applying this understanding to products. But the project was important to the students as well, since it gave them an opportunity to gather some practical experience.

Besides its contact with Delft University of Technology's School of Product Design, Johnson Controls' Design Department maintains an ongoing trainee exchange program with chairs of industrial design worldwide. These include the Art Center College of Design in California, the Royal College of Art and Coventry University in Great Britain, Umeå Institute of Design, Umeå University, Sweden, the Technical Colleague of Pforzheim in Germany and Strate Collège designers in France.