Porsche Mission X interior. Part of Porsche’s Advance Design explorations, where Yuhan Zhang contributes to future cockpit architecture and detailing.
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Master's Programme in Transportation Design
From UID’s studios to Porsche Advance Design, Yuhan Zhang’s work shows how thoughtful sketching and human‑centred thinking define tomorrow’s interiors.
Image: ŠkodaToday, Yuhan is an Interior Designer at Porsche AG, working in the Advance Design department. Her role sits upstream from production, where new interior architectures are explored and future details take shape for concept and series cars.
Not everything can be named, but a few projects can. Mission X for Porsche. Earlier, during her time at Skoda, the Kodiaq, Vision 7S and Vision E. In between UID and those badges came internships that mattered, including BMW Designworks and Volvo, each revealing how craft and culture shift across studios and continents.
A Nordic studio that taught focus
Ask Yuhan what she misses about UID and she starts with the Arts Campus. Modern workshops, long studio nights and the river catching the summer light. Umeå’s remoteness brought focus. It created space for human‑centred projects and for the Scandinavian simplicity that still guides her judgement
Industry‑connected briefs were constant, helping students feel the pressure and promise of real constraints. Scholarships were vital too. “Studying design should not be only for the privileged,” she says.
During her time at UID, Yuhan’s degree project for Volvo – Mobility & Immobility – envisioned a 2050 hybrid living pod that could be both a home and a vehicle. Designed for two, the pod transitions from a fixed dwelling to an autonomous mobile home by attaching removable omni wheels and drawing on long‑lasting battery usage. The concept blurred boundaries between domestic space and transport, offering a life‑centred, sustainable view of future mobility that foreshadowed her interior focus.
Mobility & Immobility, UID degree project by Yuhan Zhang. A Volvo 2050 hybrid living pod for two that transforms into an autonomous mobile home using removable omni wheels and long‑lasting battery power.
The break that began at the grad show
Her first full‑time role came the way many good stories do at UID, by walking someone through a project at the spring exhibition. Managers from Skoda saw the work, held an interview and offered a position. She moved from northern Sweden to Central Europe’s car country, trading the river for the proving ground, and learned how a brand’s voice threads through every line of a seat and every surface that a hand meets.
Transportation design can look straightforward from the outside. In reality, Yuhan says, it is a sequence of leaps and checks. Start on paper, move into digital tools that compress hours into minutes, build, test and circle back. Industry timelines keep tightening. One day, perhaps, designers will sit at a computer, click and let AI generate a flood of options. Speed can be useful, but only if the eye stays in charge.
Story, brand and the ethics of choice
Talk long enough about interiors and the conversation turns to responsibility. Day‑to‑day ethics depend on project and context. A Porsche hypercar and a Skoda family car are not telling the same story, and design thinking shifts with that reality. The process might be similar, but the priorities are not. What remains constant is the commitment to a narrative that fits the brand and respects the people who will live with the object.
What is next for the craft?
Two words come up quickly. AI and spatial computing. Both are reshaping studio tools and, soon enough, how people experience vehicles. Yuhan is curious about how these technologies will refresh the design process itself and how they might quicken digital transformation inside heritage carmakers. The promise is speed and breadth. The challenge is to keep judgement, taste and empathy in the loop.
A good design should tell a story that fits the brand, the thinking changes with the audience
Lines that feed the imagination
Her inspirations stand comfortably outside the automotive canon. Moebius, Alphonse Mucha, Akira Toriyama. Worlds of line and lightness, pattern and play. Games and manga keep her eye alert to character and movement. Music does the rest.
At home she records in a bedroom studio, surrounded by instruments that insist on rhythm. Funk and disco grooves, the clipped chime of Nile Rodgers. During UID days it was a lot of synth, Röyksopp, Todd Terje and Slagsmålsklubben, sounds that matched the Nordic winter and the glow of the studio after dark.
Advice to the next cohort
The industry is competitive. It was at school and it will be at work. Some days you win. On others you learn. Problems tend to be temporary once you start moving. If she could pick a superpower, Yuhan would want to remember and sketch anything from any perspective. Instead she keeps sketching, because there are no shortcuts to that kind of memory.
"Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose", she says. "But you learn"
UID’s imprint
Read her story closely and UID’s values are visible in the margins. A people‑first approach. Calm focus in the midst of change. Collaboration across programmes and with industry partners. A belief that access matters. Yuhan’s path is one version of what that environment makes possible, from the riverbank studios to the cockpit of a concept car.
Yuhan Zhang seated in the original Laurin & Klement Voiturette, the historic model that inspired her modern reinterpretation, the electric ‘eVoiturette’ concept showcased at the Škoda Museum.