Hao-Ming Chen

Before joining the course, I did a BE in industrial design in Taipei University of Technology, a school leading the Taiwanese design industry with many alumni working in the field. I found my passion for building stuff from the ground up.

I have worked in several digital companies and aided their digitizing effort. Through those experiences, I have seen how design can show its value to the organizations and how I personally as a designer, could deliver positive change to people through power of business.

To me, combining design and business is not just about putting better pretty logos and detailed spreadsheet together. The real value of service design is to investigate the mysterious power that set unique ideas in motion.

This is why I applied to RCA service design. A programme that gives us space to freely explore the landscape of design being implemented beyond tangible items.

I hope that this short introductory could help raise your interest in the most profound value of design thinking process.

My journey at RCA started with a project in collaborations with EY Seren & Rainbird AI. We use technology to help those people suffering from financial vulnerability. How service design frame Design Thinking allowed us to bring in the design value different from a traditional business perspective.

The project itself is an experiment towards creating a service that does not create stressful nudging.

This is because we felt that our duty as being a designer practitioner. Making the experience kind and desirable is how we can engage users. An engaged user is the most effective way to establish a channel for intervention with a person suffering from financial vulnerability. Detail of the project deliveries can be found on my personal website.

In my final project, I rolled out an experiment to test the theory we built up previously. The experiment focus on experience sharing and

Research, hypotheses and user feedback — First hypothesis was that the insecurity of how people's data circulates is the primary cause of the data collection distrust. The prototype attempt is an app created to test how users interact with data. The result was not great as users were not engaged. Second hypothesis is that good experience along with data collection can change how people interact with data. The prototype is a potluck which every participant will cook for another person in secret. In return, someone else will cook for the participant

Promoting a lifestyle — The potluck was an example of how people's daily life decisions influenced by good information. Promoting a lifestyle is complicated. The service will need to use a service funnel to help integrate users into the service. The start of the service funnel needs to be something manageable, something people do a bit differently every day, something that brings people joy with a sense of exploration. The design turns to the concept of food and diet because of this.

There is a fear about data collection. This problem stretches from the data misuse scandals to the lack of transparency of how data is being handled. Nevertheless, the data itself is good and has no intention to harm. How we handle the data is what is causing the trouble. Service designers like us need data to know about people and customers sitting on the other side of the service. This project aims to design a new way of handling data and allow people to empower themselves by owning and using data themselves.

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Digital Platform

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Introduction

The Flavour Palette — Flavour Palette, the visualised algorithm, will be accessible for users to see their diet journey in real-time. The palette will power the random dish suggestions. It is just like Tinder, but here people are dating the dish.

Diet Diary Pages

Interior

This is where Feastopolis sits—a restaurant using data to give a good dining experience—and in the process, introduce how a user-owned data model could benefit them. Though there is no menu, it is not entirely menuless but instead a sheet to choose what people like and dislike. To order food, people can choose between the ingredients they like, something from the past that you had with Feastopolis or something completely random to enjoy the excitement of discovering new flavours.

The Data Platform

The Process

Store Front

When the user base starts to accommodate this data-driven diet style, the focus will be shifted from the restaurant towards activities made possible thanks to the Flavour Palette. The Flavour Palette becomes the main product of the service. The platform will open for other restaurants to join. The better the utilisation of the palette, the more powerful the service proposition will be.

When a strong user base emerges, Feastopolis will start allowing users to complete a self-monitoring diary while the outside collaborators will help us build ways to measure the impact of the data. With their tools, the meaning of the data becomes apparent, which will significantly help the platform thrive. In return, outside collaborators will have the anonymous data to help their organisation to improve. The Feastopolis restaurant is still very important. It is just like an Apple store now, which promotes the Flavour Palette. The core service is to have people see how data works and enjoy the benefit of good and transparent data ownership. The service promotes the idea of people-owned data. It tells its users why their data matters and the benefits of it. Compared to the more mature platforms such as Facebook or Google, people will learn how every piece of their information matters—building a healthier environment data-sharing platform.

Hao-Ming Chen

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About

Royal College of Art

Hao-Ming Chen

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Ministry of Education

Website:

Social

About

Royal College of Art