Develop a welcoming and memorable visitor experience
Deliverable
User Study and Insight
Experience Journey Mapping
Design Strategy
Visual Identity
We have 1.18 million mental or physical disabled population in Taiwan to date (5% of the total population). Social welfare organizations have been devoting much effort to supporting their growing needs. However, the general public has little understanding of the group, which leads to biases and rejections in the communities.
In the past, Guting Shelter has disclosed little information about itself. Furthermore, its visitor routine has not been designed to make the visit intriguing nor memorable. Thus, neighboring residents and commercial units have little understanding of its service and function.
Therefore, the Social and Family Affairs Administration, Ministry of Health and Welfare, and the Children Are Us Foundation, have joined forces. The collective designated Guting Shelter as a demonstration site for social innovation to raise public acceptance for the disabled population (hereafter referred to as the "members") and the supporting organizations.
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 process to redesign the shelter began with an immersive and holistic understanding of our stakeholders' daily routine; we conducted a three-day field observation and various interviews with social workers, guardians and parents, and external stakeholders such as neighboring business owners and the property manager. A "diary" was deployed, and all members of the facility were invited to record their thoughts and how they see 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 the members to further crystalize our idea; we generated designs and titles that furthered the themed approach, with elements suggested by members that best represent the different areas of the facility and to the narrative.
Space design that tells a story and equally consistent utility boards redesigned for daily needs
Visitor tours of the facility are usually led by the facility members with guidance from the social workers. Therefore, to ensure smooth walk-through of future visits, our final task before implementation was: we prototyped the environment with the new visual designs to qualify its adoption by the members. During this simulated tour, we introduced to the members all the design that will be implemented in their new "colony" and allowed them to voice any question (or approval).
The Guting planet welcomes you
