Cultural Foresight & Automotive Materiality

Hyundai

What should future car interiors provide if we took away the idea of being a vehicle for transportation?

That was the starting point for two days of intense work in Seoul. Designed for Hyundai’s international CMF design team, the strategic session  translated emerging cultural and material shifts into opportunities for future automotive design.

Combining trend intelligence, material exploration and collaborative ideation, the hands-on program enabled participants to move from future signals to tangible applications for the car interior.

Client_ Hyundai

Program & process

  • Trend Keynotes: Three emerging territories explored through cultural, consumer and design perspectives, including The Living Lab, Purpose Luxury and Neuro Materiality.
  • Material Translation: Each trend was translated into physical material boards to connect strategic insight with tangible design possibilities.
  • Applied Exercises: Participants explored bio-based materials, sensory experiences, emotional value and new forms of materiality within future car interiors.
  • Neuro Materiality: How to work with this emerging approach?
  • Focus Groups: Participants moved from trend selection into material choices, sketching and moodboarding, developing future-oriented design concepts.
  • Presentation & Feedback: Five groups presented their concepts, followed by collective feedback and reflection on how the learnings could be applied in next steps.

Hyundai kept all reports and a box full of innovative materials to continue the exploration.

Outcome & solution

The two-day program moved the team from trend awareness to material application, giving participants a shared language for discussing emerging cultural and material shifts and translating them into future automotive interiors.

Five teams developed future-facing concepts through trend selection, material choices, sketching and moodboarding, culminating in presentations and collective feedback.

Working collaboratively was a particularly valuable part of the program. As CMF designers often work individually on specific car models, the opportunity to step out of their individual projects and develop ideas collectively created a stronger sense of exchange, shared thinking and connection across the team. Participants expressed how much they valued this collaborative dimension.

 

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“I wanted to express my deepest gratitude for your fantastic suggestions, ideas and questions you raised to the team during your stay here in South Korea – many of which we had long forgotten in our everyday lives – and for the insights and inspiration you gave our team. We still talk about it today. And what fun we had together – I haven’t had that in ages!”

 “

Diana Kloster, VP CMF Design, Hyundai Seoul

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