Develop a welcoming and memorable visitor experience
Deliverable
User Study and Insight
Experience Journey Mapping
Design Strategy
Visual Identity
Taiwan has 1.18 million individuals with disabilities (5% of the population), and while social welfare organizations work tirelessly to support them, public understanding remains limited, fostering bias and rejection. Guting Shelter, previously quiet about its services, lacked an engaging visitor experience, leaving locals unaware of its mission. To address this, the Social and Family Affairs Administration, Ministry of Health and Welfare, and the Children Are Us Foundation have partnered to designate Guting Shelter as a social innovation demonstration site, aiming to increase public acceptance of individuals with disabilities and the organizations that support them.
Sensitize booklet created during observation phase
The Challenge: How might we help visitors quickly understand and remember what the shelter is and the members it serves while creating an environment that meets the members' and staffs' daily needs.
Experience journey floor planning
The Solution: Create a narrative that will shape the facility into a unique Guting "space colony," make each visit a memorable story-telling journey. Second, personify the members' behaviors into fun characters such as "Mr. Shy," "Miss Hugs," etc. Finally, introduce the facility's various touchpoints with highly visualized assets, thus create a replicable and easy-to-remember visitor experience.
The shelter redesign began with a comprehensive understanding of stakeholders’ daily routines. Over three days, we conducted field observations and interviews with social workers, guardians, parents, business owners, and the property manager. A "diary" was introduced, inviting all facility members to document their thoughts and perspectives on the space.
Personified traits of the kids to help public better understand why they exhibit a certain behaviors
We hosted a co-creation workshop with members to refine our concept. Together, we developed designs and titles that enhanced the themed approach, incorporating elements suggested by participants to best represent different areas of the facility and align with the narrative.
Space design that tells a story and equally consistent utility boards redesigned for daily needs
Before implementation, we prototyped the environment with new visual designs to ensure smooth future visitor tours. Led by facility members with guidance from social workers, the simulated tour allowed members to explore the planned changes and provide feedback or approval on the designs. This step ensured their adoption and addressed any questions before finalizing the updates for the new "colony."
The Guting planet welcomes you
