Form Design of Car's Rear Running Light Using Morphological Analysis

Abstract

Under the booming competition and development of the automobile exhibition industry in addition to the functional function of lighting warning the lights are the soul of the car design which can reflect the design style and individuality of a car In the past especially the research topic has been focused on the imagery of car body shape and the subjective feeling of vehicle shape has been studied and researched in-depth and vehicles have been evaluated as products with Kansei vocabulary In this study we explore the features of car lighting from the perspective of the overall development trend of car lights and do case study designs according to the features which will be used as criteria for future car light designers The lamp design is based on maintaining the consistency of the family design characteristics to develop new design elements and show the greatest recognition with other competitors This study takes Audi a German car manufacturer as the pioneer in the development of car lights and selects it as the target of in-depth discussion on the features of car light brands Firstly we conducted a case study of Audi rear lights starting from the year when LED was used as the light-emitting material The profiles of the running lights directional lights brake lights fog lights and brake lights of 32 models of Audi rear lights from 2003 to 2021 were depicted The design features of the rear light were summarized by applying Morphological analysis method and were divided into four categories: Main profile Serrated or not Surrounded or not and Proportion The multi-dimensional morphological matrix was used to generate 24 combinations A questionnaire survey was conducted among participants who were familiar with the development of Audi and the results were analyzed by applying the Quantification theory type I analysis to explore the representative Audi light design features and other elements in the categories Finally according to the analysis of the questionnaire the case study of the rear light design was conducted and the styling designer of the car manufacturer was appointed as the evaluation expert to give guidance on the design of the lights and the feature judgment adjective vocabulary and preference survey were conducted The results showed that the main factors affecting the brand recognition of Audi rear lights were in order of importance Proportion Serrated and Main profile (L-shaped or U-shaped) which verified the consistency of the proposed model items with Audi brand recognition features The design combinations that best represent the Audi rear running lights are U-shaped Serrated Surrounded and flat rectangular shape; conversely the combinations that are least consistent with the Audi brand identity are L-shaped Non-serrated Non-surrounded and through tail lights

Date of Award	2021
Original language	English
Supervisor	Meng-Dar Shieh (Supervisor)