Automotive Design |

November 25, 2017

The ultimate User Experience? Ferrari: Under The Skin

Taking a four year old boy to see 'Ferrari: Under The Skin' at the Design Museum doesn’t come without an element of risk, and having been dragged by one finger through the entire exhibition in five minutes, I wondered if I would remember any of the wonders that flashed by.

I needn’t have worried, a few goes up and down in the lifts and we were ready for a second go, this time at a more reasonable pace.

The Design Museum's Ferrari retrospective is a tour through the history of the marque, from a replica of the very first Ferrari car, the 125 S to the futuristic LaFerrari Aperta designed 70 years later. It is striking to see how far the power, beauty and complexity of these cars has come in what is conceivably only one human lifetime.

The exhibition contains 14 rare Ferraris and many of the hand sketches, models, wind tunnel prototypes and wooden bucks that mark the evolution of each finished design. It's gripping to see how long chains of concept-test-iterate lead from pen and paper to road and race track.

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The exhibition doesn't leave anything out that you might be expecting to see. The Testa Rossa of Miami Vice fame is presented as a new challenge for the designers to create a mid-engined car, rewriting the rulebook of what was possible in the process.

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Ferrari's racing history is well represented with a jaw dropping lineup of racing cars topped by none other than Michael Schumacher's F1-2000, the car he drove to Championship glory in 2000, the first for Ferrari win in 21 years.

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It was a kick to observe how User Experience is at the heart of everything Ferrari do. Every detail, every idea refined and tested to eventually deliver a matchless driving experience. I enjoy reminding myself from time to time that what we do in UX has its pedigree in the way of thinking and the processes pioneered by the physical product designers of yesterday.

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