Day 2 for the Ford Community Influencers was entitled the ‘Design Fantasy Camp’. We were promised a peak inside the design process for a modern automobile. The itinerary included a blend of the old (clay modeling) and the new (virtual design, CG rendering) and how modern testing is done when actually building a full scale prototype is prohibitively expensive.
I joined up with a group of randomly sorted folks given white wristbands with orange dots, and was bussed over to the Ford Product Design Center. I don’t live that far from here, and I’ve driven by these buildings before, it was a bit odd to be actually let inside… I was hoping for Oompa Loompas and a host clad entirely in purple velvet… I was let down on those points, but overall pleased with what I saw.
First, we were given a demonstration of the theater they use for presenting their design work. They use 6 rear projection HD screens, arranged seamlessly 3×2 on a monstrous wall that can be controlled independently or together. In the same room they set up a number of demos showing things like a simple driving simulator that is used to spin a car virtually around to look at how it appears from different angles. They showed the real time rendering of a car. It was accurate enough that you could see the texture of the varnished wood reflecting back. This stuff isn’t flat- it has a texture to it. It looks better than a modern video game, not nearly as good as a pre-rendered clip). They needed to do some anti-aliasing tho- the jaggies on a zoom were pretty pronounced. They also showed a number of higher resolution pre-rendered stuff which was unsurprisingly pretty perfect.
They walked through the design process, from sketch to wireframe to CG rendering. They spoke about tools that are likely very familiar to anyone comfortable with design work. Most surprising to me was the schedule of things. We were told that much of the modern marketing materials are actually not photographs of the cars… they are instead CG renderings. Since the computerized versions of the cars are sometimes ready a year before a physical vehicle exists, this is the only practical way to get the ad materials out simultaneously with the launch. They spoke about their render farm that is used to render real time and photo-realistic images, but I found myself a bit unimpressed… I’ve been inside ILM and Pixar, and computational requirements for a full length feature film are a little higher than a commercial!
Most informative to me was a few moments I spent watching a designer lean over a giant stylus driven screen. I didn’t catch his name, but he was working at pretty impressive speeds in photoshop, drawing with one hand and using the other for his keybindings. He was drawing paths and painting inside them. I’ve worked a fair bit on a wacom tablet over the years, and it’s pretty clear that his way was far superior. I asked him about his attachment to his work and he spoke enthusiastically about the new Ford Fusion. He felt like it was his. As a fairly creative person myself, I liked to hear that. So often a creative spirit can be chewed up inside a larger organization like this. And they don’t come much bigger than Ford. But it was pretty clear that he was happy with his work, and very proud of the car.
We left the design studio to head to the Clay Modeling labs. While walking there, I couldn’t help but notice that the halls here are huge. I didn’t think much about it at first, but then I realized that they are large enough to drive cars down. And THEN I stupidly realized that no, they are large enough to drive semis through. Some of them curve gently instead of having right angles. The showroom we had breakfast in was originally designed to be large enough to show airplanes during WWII. The scale is just impressive here.
I was probably most excited to see the Clay Labs. When this trip was originally pitched to me, this was the bullet point that resonated the most. I logged a long number of hours in college in college coiling and throwing vases. The tools we saw were sometimes familiar loops… and sometimes less so: like the CNC mill that they use to rough out full scale models. Sadly photographs were off limits in this room, and we were blocked into one station- temporary walls prevented us from seeing numerous stations inside the giant room.
They use a special, very expensive clay, that they recycle whenever it is clean enough to re-use. Texturally, it’s much less gritty than anything I’ve ever worked with. It felt almost more like plasticene at the warmer temps we were handling it at. They had quarter scale and full scale models on display and let us really muck around with them, carving chunks out, and adding bits. I added eyes to the rear end of a car.
I spoke for a while with a sculptor about the work. Unlike the designer I spoke to a half hour earlier, he felt no creative ownership of his work whatsoever. It was clear that the designers called the shots, and the sculptors merely execute their vision. He wasn’t unhappy with this arrangement: I think he was just proud of doing quality work… the precision is pretty impressive. While I worked with my fingers, they used molds and templates to get their lines perfect.
The real question I had was is this process really obsolete? Ford has been using clay models since before the employees in the department were born. But in this modern era of CAD and the like, what is the point of this seemingly excessive step? The workers here spoke of an abstract word… Love. They add Love to a design. A CAD drawing doesn’t have the subtle leading curves that these sculptors add. So while you might be able to use 3D rendering to get a reasonably accurate idea of what a finished car looks like, without the sculptors fingers, the subtle curves would be lifeless. They would lack something. I spent a lot of time wondering about that. But while I might not agree with the whole ‘Love’ thing, they were right about the speed of it… if you want to move a ridge by a couple millimeters and just see what it looks like, this could be a 5 minute job.
We were bussed down the road to a new facility. The large hallways here weren’t for driving cars down, but rather the exposed brick and white makes you realize that this is multiple building built over the years and grafted together. Giant windows down the halls were once external. It’s visually quite cool.
We were shown a very nice presentation about the sustainable materials that Ford is working on. I know I should care more about such things, but using 20% coconut inside a door 10 years from now just doesn’t seem like a solution… I realize we need to take baby steps to get to a green future, but it just feels frustratingly incremental to me. The employees were passionate about their work tho, and it’s easy to respect that.
In the same space we were also given a demonstration of the Microsoft Sync technology that forms the basis for the modern interior UI. For me, this was something I have long wondered about: I’ve not had the chance to see one of these systems in action… the last car I bought was over 2 years ago and voice control wasn’t yet breaking out. Sadly I was thoroughly underwhelmed by the experience. It’s understandable I guess: the modern voice recognition universe has fundamentally been changed by Apple’s Siri. Siri amazes people with an impressive vocabulary and even a bit of humor. It has a remarkable sense of context that Sync can’t touch. The poor guy in the drivers seat had to take a number of steps to do something relatively simple… it was pretty comical watching simple english phrases not work, and the computer asking him over and over again to clarify.
Part of this would be solved with a bit of practice… you need to learn what words work, and what don’t. But what is clear is that this is the voice recognition and the language comprehension of several years ago. The software inside every car lags behind the software in your phone. This has always been the case: cars take 5 years to develop… whereas you phone gets a new revision every year. Also, I know it’s a bit obnoxious of me to say it, but I just don’t want a big microsoft logo emblazoned in the center of my car. I want fewer graphics and logos in my life. More minimizing, less marketing.
Since you are reading my blog, you know what Avatar is. And you know what motion capture is. But we got to watch a guy covered in tiny dots stand up and sit down instead a giant frame of a car inside the HMI Simulator. They test people of all sizes and shapes, and can automatically convert the rig in a matter of moments to represent the dimensions of any of a number of Ford cars… as well as a library of competitor vehicles. It ain’t as much fun as Andy Serkis wearing the gimp suit and capturing the Gollum performance, but it’s still kind of wacky watching the little dots fly around on the screen, and then be replaced with a 3D mannequin showing the pressures exerted on the joints of the body as you enter and exit a car.
The most important thing here that caught my mind was the discussion of the numbers. This is something that always touches my heart: sometimes you get in a debate with someone, and only data can back it up. This whole testing facility is designed to get the numbers necessary to make the right decision… armed with a stack of indisputable math, you can go to a designer and say conclusively that something doesn’t work, no matter how pretty it might be.
Our last stop of the day was the HOP Lab where they have a driving simulator set up to allow testing of possible configurations for the internal buttons. Unlike the HMI lab where they can easily switch from one configuration to another, here it might take weeks to convert from one experiment to another. But once configured they can experiment with button layouts in an environment that simply simulates driving with a giant screen and simulated rear view mirrors. This way they can see how a driver might react while trying to adjust their seats or select a radio station while under the pressures of driving.
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All in all it was a pretty cool day. At every station I was impressed by the enthusiasm of the presenters. They were clearly experts in their fields. As essentially a media/software guy, I’ve always had a hard time understanding why it takes so long to go from design to showroom, but this gave me pretty practical understanding of just a few of the thousand steps along the way. Tomorrow I’ll wrap-up this story with Part 3… where I’ll write a little about the whole experience and Ford’s efforts into social marketing.
– As per Ford’s request for disclosure, they paid for our accommodations, but the opinions in this piece are my own.
