Role in Team: User Research, Design Strategy, User Experience Design, Project Management

Introduction

Taiwan health and welfare has identified over 11.8 million metal and physical disability, approximately 5% of total population. Many social welfare organisation are devoting efforts to support them and trying to dissolve obstacles with loves. However, general public has little knowledge of the needs of disability which leads them to reject those services to locate in communities.

Guting Sheltered Workshop（古亭工坊）is social welfare service for children with intelligent development disorder. In the past, they disclose little information for general public and only open for filtered visitation; even neighbourhood has little understanding of its service. To raise public awareness and acceptance, Taiwan Social and Family Affairs Administration (衛生福利部社會及家庭署) decided to work with Careus Foundation (喜憨兒基金會) by holding open days at Guting Sheltered Workshop. Therefore, renovating its visitor routine and making intriguing visit experience are critical.

Challenge

How might we create an inviting environment that make visitors understand what workshop serve in a short time while still meets internal staff daily needs with consideration of disability limitation.

Solution

Create a narrative to shape facility into a unique “Guting Space Colony” and introduce service touchpoints with distinctive visual assets to make it replicable for other facilities and long-term maintenance. Also, personify disability behaviours into cartoon characters like “Miss Repetitive”, “ Mr. Shy”, “Mr. Loudly” etc., to make visit to workshop memorable and educable.

Process

1. User Research

Beginning with immersive user research, we conducted a 3-day field observation and holistic stakeholder interviews, included social workers, caregivers and parents of children with disability, and external stakeholders such as property manager and neighbouring business owners. A diary study was deployed to record how disability, as target of service, think of facility service, activities and spaces.

2. Design Strategy

• Functional Area Division: We discovered the building structure is the biggest barrier to optimise visiting flow; therefore, dividing facility into functional areas will help lay the groundwork.

• Visualised Information Architecture: In order to demonstrate better visiting experience, we categorised service touchpoints into four groups: signs, instructions, announcements and labels with modular visuals.

3. Co-Creation

We proposed two design directions — applying colour psychology into environmental design to represent different areas of facility, or designing a custom story to demonstrate holistic experience. Facility members are invited to choose their design preferences and to voice questions. Children also participated in co-creation session to crystal our idea, suggesting the elements and titles for storytelling themed approach.

4. Prototyping

Our final task before implementation was to verify our improvement with facility members. A prototyping session was hosted to realise if the new experience design qualify its adoption. Furthermore, visitor tour usually led by disability assisted by social workers. We prototyped environment design and introduced visiting flow to ensure a smooth walk-through of future visit led by members.

5. Implementation

This project is partnered with ONEDOR & DreamVok