A Card-based Co-Design Toolkit for Exploring Smart Material Applications with Multiple Stakeholders: A Case Study on Automotive Interior Design

Smart materials have garnered significant attention in both academia and industry, yet identifying pragmatically impactful applications still requires contributions from multiple stakeholders, including researchers, designers, and industry professionals. Although previous research has explored novel technical approaches or user-centered applications of smart materials, this study focuses on how to stimulate effective dialogue among stakeholders to explore impactful smart material applications. To this end, we provided a card-based co-design toolkit, tailored to automotive interior design as a case study. We conducted a multi-stakeholder co-design workshop to examine the performance and reveal the benefits of employing the toolkit in the co-design process. The workshops resulted in 16 concept designs. Qualitative interviews further revealed that, using our toolkit, the co-design process effectively fostered mutual understanding among stakeholders, enhanced both creativity and depth throughout the design process, and provided practical insights for each stakeholder's future work.