How one university student designs projects to live in another planet
Her intention is a new way of thinking and working in space, and to promote the inclusion of creatives in the industry. The initiative was presented at the International Astronautical Congress 2021, in Dubai, in the United Arab Emirates.
Aquetzali Kaori Becerril Jiménez, an undergraduate student of Industrial Design at UNAM, promotes the use of tools and methods of Strategic Design applied to commercial space projects. Her initiative was one of the proposals selected, among more than five thousand from around the world, and she was invited to present it in person at the 72nd edition of the International Astronautical Congress 2021, in Dubai, in the United Arab Emirates.
The intention of the presentation, which took place last October, Kaori mentioned, was to introduce a new way of thinking and working in space, and to promote the inclusion of creative people, specifically industrial designers. This is, because eventually in the next few years we will be looking at people living on the Moon, and the creatives must be there.
For example, they are already planning to generate a Lunar Village by 2040, so what are the plans of the entire space community, where can your company be inserted within this value chain, what can you contribute, that is the answer to Strategic Design. The university's proposal, presented at the event that brings together the world's space agencies, is based on this field, with certain tools that other disciplines use, such as futurism, which visualizes possible scenarios.
Her approach focuses on creative options to make industries grow towards a specific public, creating a product or service that directly serves the user; in other words, integral research. This methodology is how we think of our profession: it begins with research, that creative process that, for example, would be done for the creation of a mouse, we apply it to a not so physical level, but to an executive-level to make decisions in a company.
For the work published in the article: "Strategic Design for Space Companies: A Different Approach", I had the opportunity to listen to the plans for space development and international collaboration of space agencies such as NASA, ESA, JAXA, as well as companies such as Lockheed Martin; or research in universities in the European Union, United Kingdom, India, China, Japan, Korea, and the United States, she said.
Democratization of space
The proposal of the Strategic Design methodology for space companies addresses the new complexities in the challenges to be faced in the new era of space democratization. Thanks to this opportunity, launch an initiative for the development of a platform that seeks to connect and promote the work of creatives in the space industry, called Interplanetary Creative Society.
"Eventually I want more designers to get involved in the space quest. I was once told to put my feet on the ground, to stop dreaming, that this was not industrial design, that I was never going to do it, that I should go to Engineering... they discouraged me, but at the same time they motivated me because now I know that innovation is when you do something out of the ordinary," she concluded.
