How to ride the subway (NYC)

 

Extra footwear, hand sanitizers etc. Interesting contextual insights there (although perhaps applicable more towards the ladies)

Project Reflection

As my project is drawing near to its end, I feel satisfied with the learning outcomes I've received throughout the project. Besides working on this independently, I have managed to streamline the project into something that is manageable within the time-frame, and I hope I will be able to communicate clearly what I wish to present when the time comes.

Social Impact
Considering what I have done and put together, my next steps adding further to considering returning and frequent visitors, is a long term overview about how tourism would impact Korea. While noting that the Hallyu Wave has brought a positive economical impact on Korea, from my experience seeing how Macau has transformed itself over the past 10 years into a Asian Las Vegas, this could be a leading insight to investigate on which may lead to seeing the big picture on tourism, beyond transportation.

Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs
Although not actively applied throughout the project, Maslow's figure of needs has been a guiding pylon as I conducted my field research with tourists.

Maslow's figure

My tourist data

Master Thesis Summary

This is a summary write up of my individual project for my Master thesis submission at SADI.

A service design project for tourists in Seoul, investigating the traveling experience, particularly by using the Seoul Metro, and then design improvements through uncovering their needs.

The project employs ethnographic research into the experience of tourists from the perspective of the user. The process is broken down into 4 phases—Define, Discovery, Develop, and Deliver.

Key findings from the research identifies opportunities which then are translated into 
designs and eventually narrated through a usage scenario and  presented collectively on a service blueprint.

Cradle to Cradle

Going more in depth to sustainability and social change/responsibility.

This is a TED presentation by William Mcdonough, the founder of Cradle2Cradle, widely known for his large-scale environmentally sustainable projects including the Ford factory site that created the largest green roof, using the tools of trees to save 35 million dollars.

 

Notes
C2C is a holistic economic, industrial and social framework that seeks to create systems that are not just efficient but essentially waste free.

Even simply put, Cradle to Cradle is about being waste-free, being 'Green'.

Design is the signal of first intentions. So what is the 1st question? What is the intention?

Guardian: How can we secure local society, create world peace and save the environment?
Commerce: How do we generate prosperity?
Design: How do we love all children of all species of all time?

"Our goal is a delightfully diverse, safe, healthy and just world, with clean air, water, soil, and power—economically equitably, ecologically and elegantly enjoyed"—Cradle2Cradle


Competition = comes from the word Com-petare, which means Strive together. It means that Olympic atheletes train together, they get fit together and then they compete. The Williams sister trains together—one of them wins. 

By toxifiying themselves as the lowest cost producer (China) and send their products to the lowest cost distribution (Walmart, US), and US distributors sends them all their money—there would an environmental disaster.

—
Note to self: this is where the money is

Massimo Vignelli

A great designer once said, “A good designer must be able to design anything from a spoon to a city.” This means that the principles of good design are universal, and that these same principles must be applied to everything from logos to websites, to packaging, to planets.

The name of the great designer is Massimo Vignelli. He loves Helvetica. He design the American Airlines logo (the only airlines logo to have not change their identity for the past 50 years).


One of his favorite works, which is my favorite, is the New York City subway guide.

4 Tourist Types

Types of Tourists–4 main categories
Tourists are classfied, according to their needs and their reasons for travelling. This brief categorization aids to identifiy the specific tourist needs for stakeholders involved in the tourism industry.

Business and professionals
Tourist who travel due to work related activities. It could be related to studying to seek a higher qualification or for medical reasons which are unavailable in their own countries

Reason for traveling: Attending a conference or tradeshow, company incentive trip or cosmetic surgery

Leisure and holiday
This can be broken into 4 sub categories—Adventure, cultural, eco, and leisure.

Reason for traveling: Shopping, visiting UNESCO world heritage sites, skiing or attending a festival i.e. World Cup 2006 (Korea/Japan)

Visiting friends and relatives
A new an emerging tourist as globalization and advancement of technology enables people to migrate and travel conveniently.

Reason for traveling: Attending a friend’s wedding or attending a funeral

Youth tourists
Gap year students who travel in between their education or just before they embark with their career. This could be group travellers or individuals such as backpackers who are low-budget travellers.

Reason for traveling: Exploration, gaining life experiences

The Good of Service Design

"Tourism is the temporary, short-term movement of people to destination outside the places where they normally live and work and their activities during the stay at each destination. It includes movements for all purposes."
Beaver, Allan (2002). A Dictionary of Travel and Tourism Terminology. Wallingford: CAB International. p. 313

Tourist have in fact plenty of pain-points (struggles and needs), however because of the fact that tourism is considered a short-term activity in relation to their daily life, often these pain-points are forsaken as tourists would unlikely be encountering the same pain-points again.

On the other hand, because the user's experience is seen and evaluated from the overall experience, the good parts tend to shadow the bad parts, thus little noise is made to tackle these problems. Hence it is difficult to pay attention to tourists and soothe their needs, unless much attention is paid towards pursuing an overall experience.

So with a service design approach, its bottom up method of looking at the landscape enables me to cast an overview on the subject I am focusing on. Through field observations and applying various tools to present and evaluate my data, I can uncover valuable insights that can lead to design solutions that will serve to solve the pain-points noted during the research.

Another main feature of adopting Service Design thinking is that the approach is not about avoiding mistakes, but rather to explore as many possible mistakes as possible.

Design Thinking For Service Design

Quoting Thomas Lockwood, he states that Service design begins with discovering what processes need improvement and how to best serve people's needs. To me that is by far the best definition I have came across that summarizes the meaning of this new learned design field.

Earlier on in his book, he also talks about co-creation as a key element to innovation. And to share, this is the formula:

Engineer + Designer + a business analyst on the side + a whole lot of Willingness to work together to experiment, develop and test = innovation success

With that said, besides the differences in each field, personally I feel that there must be a certain similarity for it to all work. I would believe the success would be easier reach if the team would have a similar interest i.e. EURO 2012. Aside from that, every stakeholder involve MUST have a passion for the field/client they are working on, otherwise the result will surely be compromised. Like in a footballing sense, it's the combination of having the passion for the game, skills/talents, and gelling with the teammates to make a success team that can deliver results.

This is my added definition of Design Thinking.

Key Principles of Design Thinking

Key Principles of design thinking in creating customer experiences:
> Experience is constantly in motion
> Experience is a result of the customer’s perception
> Touchpoints have influence, but budgets do not always reflect this
> From a brand view, it is neccessary to achieve internal alignment before
customer experience can be properly designed
—
Lockwood, Thomas (2009), Design Thinking, Allworth Press, pg15-16 (foreword)

Helvetica

Recently I've just finished the film documentary of Helvetica, probably the only typeface of it's stature to hit the screens. The film evolves around the history, cultural impact, and meanings of typography, and just about everything related to the font.

The film duly begins with interviewing Massimo Vignelli, the man who has design the everlasting logo for American Airlines. Like many other designers, he believes that type should be reduced to 1 font to allow other aspects to communicate to the user. A fellow revered designer of his generation, Wim Crouwel emphasizes this by saying,

"The meaning is in the content of the text, and not in the typeface"

He adds on by talking about the emergence of technology and had this to say, in which I absolutely agree but is often found guilty of,

"You can't do better design with a computer but you can speed up your work enormously"

Poetic as can be, Massimo Vignelli makes a very apt definition to what designers do,

"Doctors cure diseases; as designers, we are curing visual diseases"

There were other designers whom I have been admiring since being a designer such as, Paula Scher, Stefan Sagmeister, Nick Carson, Matthew Carter, and Neville Brody (these people are really important to know as designers), but perhaps I'd go more into the detail of their works in future.

The Tourist Lane

To improve pedestrian efficiency, the people at Improv Everywhere is suggesting tourists to commute on their designated walkways so they could do what they do, like randomly change direction and walk into things while looking up instead of ahead.

I reckon this is healthy and relevant for any urban society, especially for a city like Seoul with 22 million people. I guess this also acts to preserve the locality and identity of a place. It actually got me thinking about how this would have already been implemented in North Korean as visiting tourists are embarked on a full guided tour.

From a local perspective, as seen from the video, this would also probably invoke a certain value of pride to be proud of your own identity.

What looks ridiculous on first impression might actually hold true weight if thought through!