‘Death Literacy’ is a project inspired by my recent personal experience with bereavement and the resulting realisation that myself and many others are ill prepared to deal with death. The project explores how people can start developing death literacy; having the knowledge, understanding, skills, and confidence to support yourself and others in achieving a good death at the end of life.

Three key areas emerged for developing death literacy, which ended up being central to the proposed concept of a role-playing card game about the end of life.

I’m a designer with a background in psychology who is passionate about finding ways of promoting and improving people’s health and wellbeing. If you’re interested in my work, do get in touch via the links below.

Children’s Socialization

The social development of children is a very important aspect of the growth process.

However, public events like lockdown caused by COVID-19 have artificially blocked the social life of children. When the children’s social circle is blocked, socialization cannot be formed smoothly in the critical age group, which will not only cause physical problems but also easily affect the children’s psychology.

Therefore, under this topic, I would like to find out how to help children ease and avoid negative emotions during and after social isolation, helping them return to their social circle where they were forced to be ‘kicked out’.

We live in a paradoxical world. As we continue to deliver more material comforts and conveniences to more people, we are simultaneously confronted with the cost of delivering those comforts in the form of climate change. According to the UN Emission Gap Report, our ‘commitment gap’ is steadily rising. Policy changes are necessary, but how do we get people to change their attitudes and behaviours towards consumption, and make their attitudes, habits and rituals more synonymous with our emerging future ?

Though there are many ways to explore this question, I was particularly drawn to the idea of re-imaging popular rituals and rites to make them more attuned to a future where environmental crisis is a reality. Rituals are a ubiquitous part of our social world, and among other things, mark rites of passage in an individual’s life (birthdays, weddings, anniversaries). Though they are ubiquitous, it is worth questioning whether these rituals carry the same significance anymore. An important element of many rites of passage is ritual of ‘gifting’. Though never thought of as a rite of passage, the global gifting market is poised to be about $77B by 2022. In many ways, it is worth asking if current gifting trends contribute to our own future demise by adding to our consumerism ? If so, what can be done about it ?

The Future Present hopes to explore such an alternative. The project aims to reimagine rituals of intergenerational gifting to young urban adults to be more meaningful and conscious towards the present and future environment. It is envisioned as a gifting service/platform that enables parents to gift their children the promise of a greener tomorrow by investing in urban gardens/forests. The youth are given a chance to explore the bounties of these gardens, make an investment into their future as well as pass it on to someone else.

Kwanprapa is a designer from Thailand, experiences in communication design. She curious about human behaviours with surrounding influences and intend to apply design disciplinary for develop user experience.

Wandering Walk: When city wandering supports lifelong learning in the ageing population

Inspired by childhood memory with her grandparents, the project focused on the topic of ageing society and questioned about how to maintain the ability to live independently in older age. People live longer but longer doesn’t mean healthier or happier. Many older people have health and cognitive ability recession after retirement. So, the first research question is not about ‘how to live longer’ but ‘How to live independently as long as possible’ and found that lifelong learning approach might be the key to maintain their ability.

However, there is not every older people is an active learner due to various cause such as stigma, and their early experience in learning. One of the challenges of learning in older age is how to build up a growth mindset and nudge them to physically and metaphorically step out of the comfort zone. To support the older population to have lifelong learning lifestyle, the project use walking activity that the target user familiar with to take them to explore the city and introduce them to learning activity by local organisations in the city. Walking activity is flexible, no-hierarchy and provide opportunity for learning at their own pace as well as create a chance for socialising during the walk.

Wandering walk is the activity that aims to a learning mindset and encourages older people to enjoy learning again through city wandering activity. The framework designs to nudge curiosity of ageing users and encourages them to be an active learner by sharing, learning and cooperating in informal-open-environment.

See full project and the research process here

With an interest in social complexity and human behaviours, Carolina Moyano is a Mexican, with Colombian heritage, and 3 years of work experience as an Industrial Designer. Who just finished her master degree at GSA in Service Design. Carolina’s current project is the development of a platform that searches for the learning of a healthy sexual life, provides legit source information and assists the issue of male gender behaviours and stigma.

This platform wants to break the mainstream mindset of the male gender we have today, creating a channel of prevention for toxic masculinity and violence against women.

The inspiration from this project came from the interest in creating solutions to problems that affect people’s lives based on the nature of their gender. She wants people to understand the roots of the problem to find a way to prevent them. This platform is just one step closer for that.

Other concerns of Carolina’s work are Alzheimer’s, violence against women and motherhood.

Xidan Tu is a service designer focused on innovative service, experience, and design trends, she currently works at KONE China as a service designer.

She previously worked in a design consultancy based in Shanghai as a UX researcher for four years (Sep 2015- May 2019). The primary clients she has served include different industries, such as transportation, consumer electronics, fast food, FMCG, and stationary. These various projects cultivated her of different practical research abilities, brought her pleasures to do the design research, and paved the way for further studying service design.

She believes service design could cultivate holistic and critical thinking to tackle social and commercial issues and bring future changes. During GSA’s one-year study journey, she had opportunities to participate in social innovation projects, which allowed her to dive deeper into the human-centred research methodology and thinking mindset and to become a more kind and patient person.

‘HOME ON TAP’ is her diploma project, aiming to explore the role of a community pub in creating a sense of community belonging and enhancing social well-being to help reverse a community pub’s shutdown. It gives her an exciting opportunity to research and think about a typical local culture icon’s social values in an innovative and warm view by getting access to and engaging with experts, associations, and lovely ordinary people.

For the whole project report, please see here.

Awards:

May 2019 – Work in China as a UX researcher – Received the Governor’s International 12 month Postgraduate Scholarship from GSA to Study Abroad

Jul 2020- The Glasgow School of Art, Innovation School- Project ‘Healer’-  Top 20 Teams of the 2020 Student Service Design Challenge

New Sharing model for society:
Empower disabled people and more to ask for and offer help

Introduction
The project is a trial about service design and inclusive design.

It explores disabled identity, disability narrative and finds a definition of what is real inclusion.

It explores what is the real world of disability and why people have barriers and fears on both sides?

It is also a trial about how to have a sharing model for society to empower people to ask for and offer help.

During the coronavirus, we are facing difficulties and challenges in the same storm, but sometimes we find we are not in the same boat. It’d be essential to acknowledge that the crisis magnifies this and not caused directly by it, before Covid-19 this was also an issue.

We have various disabilities, barriers and fears. It means that we have shared challenges. How can we create new connection model?

Framework of toolkit

Part 1: When you can embrace different yourself, you can find others’ diversity.

Part 2: Help is taking it off someone, support is letting them do it their own way. Start a conversation in many ways. Don’t be afraid of trials and errors.

Part 3: We can be empowered to do what we want to do. We have information, we have a good environment. We celebrate diversity and disability.

Zain is a Service Designer by profession with a background in Advertising, and has led projects in healthcare, social inclusion, finance and agriculture sectors. He values systems-level thinking in the design process to make a holistic social impact and is passionate about design for social innovation. His practice is focused towards helping groups in our society that are disadvantaged or vulnerable due to systemic challenges and hopes to work in the public sector to improve their living experience.

For his Masters’ project ‘Journey to my Home!’, he explored the situation around hidden homelessness in the UK to understand the challenges they face, the societal impact on people who are experiencing homelessness and how can they access adequate support to improve their circumstances.

Journey to my home! is a one-stop solution for anyone experiencing homelessness or is at the risk of eviction, by creating a personalized journey to get housing and providing information on all the existing support structures while signposting them to the most compatible organization for their needs. It enables people to navigate through their homelessness and gives them the agency to change their circumstances.

Linkers Talk to me – An Invisible relationship sign for tourists to use.

From the disaster experience shared by tourists, I found out most people do have a warm heart that is willing to help others, but sometimes they can’t identify whether someone needs help. This kind of embarrassment makes people unable to lend a helping hand. Language is not the biggest gap. The most important thing is to build up a bridge to fill it. This signal is to let them confirm their needs and encourages people to communicate actively.

Also, as a familiar sign for tourists, it will become a guiding role when they search for help. Not all police stations or hospitals will provide translation services. It could become an obvious signal for them to feel they are well come to access. Foreign tourists may feel anxious and helpless when they stay in the earthquake shelter. This signal will guide them to find a group and benefit for local people to know their identity. Then they could better receive appropriate information and find a way to access to Multilingual help platform.

We always emphasize that community resilience has great power in the disaster recovery stage. But it is difficult for foreigners to access to the local community. So I design these sign to help them build up the relationship with local people and service. It’s a kind of short-term community.

Alderman, L., Chisholm, J., Denmark, F., & Salbod, S. (1998). Bereavement and Stress of a Miscarriage: As it Affects the Couple. OMEGA – Journal Of Death And Dying, 37(4), 317-327.

doi: 10.2190/dqnq-pfam-7v00-52f3

Bailey, S., Boivin, J., Cheong, Y., Kitson-Reynolds, E., Bailey, C., & Macklon, N. (2019). Hope for the best …but expect the worst: a qualitative study to explore how women with recurrent miscarriage experience the early waiting period of a new pregnancy. BMJ Open, 9(5), e029354. doi: 10.1136/bmjopen-2019-029354

Bailey, S., Bailey, C., Boivin, J., Cheong, Y., Reading, I., & Macklon, N. (2015). A feasibility study for a randomised controlled trial of the Positive Reappraisal Coping Intervention, a novel supportive technique for recurrent miscarriage. BMJ Open, 5(4), e007322-e007322. doi: 10.1136/bmjopen-2014-007322

Bailey, S., Boivin, J., Cheong, Y., Bailey, C., Kitson-Reynolds, E., & Macklon, N. (2020). Effective support following recurrent pregnancy loss: a randomized controlled feasibility and accept- ability study. Reproductive Biomedicine Online, 40(5), 729-742. doi: 10.1016/j.rbmo.2020.01.022

Bailey, S., Boivin, J., Cheong, Y., Bailey, C., Kitson-Reynolds, E., & Macklon, N. (2020). Effective support following recurrent pregnancy loss: a randomized controlled feasibility and accept- ability study. Reproductive Biomedicine Online, 40(5), 729-742. doi: 10.1016/j.rbmo.2020.01.022

Bardos, J., Hercz, D., Friedenthal, J., Missmer, S., & Williams, Z. (2015). A National Survey on Public Perceptions of Miscarriage. Obstetrics & Gynecology, 125(6), 1313-1320. doi: 10.1097/aog.0000000000000859

BUENO, J. (2020). BRINK OF BEING. [S.l.]: VIRAGO PRESS LTD.
Doka, K., & Martin, T. (2014). Men Don’t Cry, Women Do. Taylor and Francis.

Meaney, S., Corcoran, P., Spillane, N., & O’Donoghue, K. (2017). Experience of miscarriage: an interpretative phenomenological analysis. BMJ Open, 7(3), e011382. doi: 10.1136/bmjop- en-2016-011382

Miller, E., Temple-Smith, M., & Bilardi, J. (2019). ‘There was just no-one there to acknowledge that it happened to me as well’: A qualitative study of male partner’s experience of miscar- riage. PLOS ONE, 14(5), e0217395. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0217395

Obst, K., Due, C., Oxlad, M., & Middleton, P. (2020). Men’s grief following pregnancy loss and neonatal loss: a systematic review and emerging theoretical model. BMC Pregnancy And Childbirth, 20(1). doi: 10.1186/s12884-019-2677-9

This is a community-based mutual aid project for major illnesses, promoted by charitable organizations and the community. Charities take the lead, the community as the carrier, and the  residents as the main users.

A mutual aid organization based on understanding and trust among residents. Before joining, members should meet the corresponding health standards and share the mutual aid expenses equally every month. While helping the diseasedmembers, it also adds an extra protection for every members.

My goal is to explore new ways of charity, make people realize that charity is a tool for humans.

This research project is an attempt to improve the well-being of social workers from the perspective of social innovation. The whole project has gone through 12 weeks. Design thinking has been applied to the design process, a variety of design methods and tools have been tried to use each problem research and idea production process. From the initial search for the reasons behind social work phenomena to the specific stakeholder interviews to gain insights, and then to try to design from the perspective of design innovation can act on the actual minimum value output, and finally to improve the well-being of social workers.

Acknowledgements: Thanks to all the social workers who have been fighting on the front line during the epidemic, and thanks for the time, energy, and even lives to make this society better. I would like to thank my supervisor Kaitlyn Debiasse, who always supports, care about my project, and gave me lots of suggestions and guidance as well as the contacts. I would like to thank Sarah Rose, Catherine Brannan, Alistair and Lyz, who gives me tones of support during the process of my research project and help me more understand the social work industry. Thanks to the tutors, Jonathan Baldwin, Iain Reid, Mafalda Moreira, Emma Murphy who helped me and gave me support and valuable suggestions during the project. Thanks to my classmates, including Zain Ail, YuXuan Lou, Jie Zeng, and Hannah, Li Wang, YuHin Chan, Struan Fraser, who help me conduct the research activities and work feedback.

This project began from loneliness before the COVID-19 affected Europe a piece of news from The Guardian called We millennials have more ‘friends’ than ever. Then focus on new residents and their journey in markets or grocery stores. To avoid their loneliness experience, providing more possible touchpoints for newcomers or new residents to get in touch with local people.

PRINCIPLE OF DESIGN:

• Build up a bridge between new residents and local people around newcomers’ living place.

• Provide more touchpoints for shop staff and customers to communicate.

• Let new residents feel welcome and cordial.

• Build up an appropriate connection with residents who can provide suitable assist.

WHY

• Most of the interviewees find the market, pub, or restaurant after they are arriving at Glasgow.

• From previous interviews and research, acquaintances may help people feel safe, comfortable, cordial, and involved in the local environment. Besides, most of the time, physical acquaintances can provide more efficient help for people.

• Build up connections can prevent people feel isolated and lonely.

IMPROVE THE SHOPPING EXPERIENCE OF THE ELDERLY

“Flee in the quake” is a lightweight earthquake escaping skill learning app.
By understanding the type of user’s living environment, the app provides customized, suitable escaping guidance for users. Let users learn the most suitable earthquake escape method in the shortest time.

“If you ever have the experience of not knowing how to do when an earthquake happens;
if you have not encountered an earthquake before, but want to learn some earthquake escape knowledge in advance;
if you feel that there are many earthquake escape situations and the escape method is difficult to remember;
“flee in the quake” app will be your best choice.”

provide a service system that combine offline and online service to develop customer’s experience in apparel retail during COVID-19.

Financial literacy is an important life skill which helps us understand the value of money and handle it better. Young people starts to have a basic financial understanding before age 7, and kids’ financial behaviour could be influenced by parents and their conversation around money topics. However, many parents feel it difficult to teach kids money management and talk about finance, which causes their difficulties of getting kids spending wisely, also losing the chance to bring lifelong financial skills. This project aims to empower parents to teach kids money management effectively. Cubee is a tool and conversation starter for parents to teach kids financial knowledge, it let kids get their regular allowance by unlocking and finishing the activity tasks in secret advent boxes with parents. It can promote conversation about money topics in family, and let kids learn financial responsibility in a fun way before they get the money.

The Covid-19 has been a challenge that nobody wanted. Still, it also raised awareness of rethinking the relationship between individuals and organisations. In terms of using workshops or other engagement methods to better involve more people in discussions and collaborations, one of the key factors is their motivations and their imagination capacity.

This project Daydream aims to invite more people to discuss their preferred future in a more collective and caring way. Given that change is a key theme in such uncertain times. This framework works as a way to help participants to enhance their understandings of their current challenges and opportunities. Using a more current-orientated strategy, participants can take actions and reflect their collective visions simultaneously. Using storytelling and metaphors, this journey will create a share-momentum benefiting people from different background.

Daydream has received some positive feedback from stakeholders such as local communities and engagement professionals to local authorities. This project will still ongoing, and looking forward to opportunities to apply this engagement model with greater impact.

Glad to E-meet you!

This project is an effort to explore a simple solution (positive practices at workplaces) that can promote a more holistic and satisfying society. Initial inspirations were from situations that led to dissatisfaction and concepts like collaborative social innovation and synergy. The proposed solution involves the induction of cost-effective and straightforward positive practices to be followed at workplaces that aim to repair and balance work-life patterns, attitudes and habits, additionally, that promote wellbeing and financial resilience among the changeable – young working parents and youth. The concrete repair during this stage impacts the future generation positively.

This project also shows the need and importance of Positive practices that may seem familiar to many through value learning, but if observed following it is relatively minimal, leading to the imbalances among ourselves.

The significant methods to elicit relevant insights from the audience involved desk research, interviews and two questionnaires, totally involving over 24 learned respondents. Additionally, also tried “constant observation and reflection” that involved observing surroundings, attitudes and habits that we exhibit naturally, to understand the link of the cause, effect and human behaviour. It was quite an elevating experience that emphasised the value of empathy and its ability to magnify productivity. Constant observation and referring expert papers proved useful amidst the challenging lockdown due to COVID.

Please click on the PDF opposite or below to learn more.

Thank you for your interest in my project- Positive Practices 🙂

Sincerely,

Sai Paresh Goklaney

Keywords: Collaboration, Social, Innovation, Parenting, Upbringing, Work-Life, Workplace, Positive Practices, Influence.

Hi, I’m Arooj!

I’m a designer who creates engaging experiences using a mix of research methods, intuitive hunches and authentic human stories. I’m particularly passionate about helping to build better structures that won’t disadvantage certain minority groups in our society.

‘Pulling The Race Card’ is a project motivated by my personal experiences with racism and micro-aggressions as a Scottish South Asian woman, realising that there are many others who have had to deal with similar issues throughout their life. The project is focused on empowerment, as a direct response to women beyond their school years trying to understand their identity and blend of cultures.

I come from Italy and I have a background in product design, after Milano Politecnico I have decided to come to GSA because I wanted to have an experience abroad. I have chosen the Mdes in design Innovation and Service design because I prefer to analyse the problems with a systemic approach, reflect on people’s needs, and I believe in the value of research to create a valid project outcome, every step of my projects follows an innovative method and empathy.

My final project aims to reduce the amount of cast-off clothing by reducing buying and to do that I have decided to focus on the potentiality of the emotional connection we can have with our garments, stimulating the users to build memories and live their clothes. My action wants to be a systemic action that is why in my analysis of contemporaneity I have came upon the companies point of view and I have developed also a new business model, more sustainable and transparent.

What is it?

A platform based on the second-hand furniture store cooperates with the designers to attract more consumers to join in.

The service provides for consumers who have the aesthetics demand of the furniture and the refurbishing process by them could build an emotional connection with the furniture. The card they earned which is like a kind of birth card of the furniture. They are the creator of the furniture and they need to take care of them like family. The platform engages three kinds of groups people: Consumers, Designers, and furniture staff. It meets different people’s demands which could be a holistic system.

The detail of the project that could contact me:xiaonanyangellen@gmail.com

With the development of China’s economy, the government’s support for rural infrastructure, and the enhancement of welfare in all aspects, more and more people want to build their own modern private residences in the countryside. At the same time, their requirements for self-built houses have also increased with the continuous improvement of their living standards. This might be a good trend, but there are many problems existing during the whole process.

Villastruct

Villastruct is a company that helps rural homeowners build houses. Not only we provide pattern houses, such as standardized high-quality housing options to meet users’ needs and save costs; but also we provide a platform for homeowners to better obtain information from professional service providers and collaborate with them.

The complete and systematic solution provides most of users with standardized, low-cost, high-quality pattern houses. For users who wish to customize more, they can better establish relationships with the settled professional service providers through the platform. We build trust and efficient communication so that they can access professional design and construction.

ADJUST THE IMBLANCED RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN FLEX COURIERS AND THE PLATFORM

The gig economy is becoming more and more popular, not only because of new technologies but also because of fewer job opportunities. People make money through flexible work functions to support their families. They have also begun to play an important role in awakening cities in the global epidemic, but when they work so hard, the platform (ie, the employer) can fire them at any time and unconditionally according to their nature, without any responsibility. Therefore, I want to find a suitable direction through investigation and research to better protect the rights of this group of people.

Through secondary research and data, I have a preliminary understanding of the work characteristics of the performance workers and the problems they face.

Current problems: 1. Lack of financial security; 2. Loss of dignity at work; 3. Inability to develop a career or to leave a career. The nature of the work of gig workers: exclusive health protection and contracts for employees and ordinary workers, but couriers and other gig workers are called self-employed, without a stable income and protection, and without any benefits. And unemployment insurance.

Based on the data obtained from the desk study, the questionnaires were aggregated for interviews and surveys. I mainly interviewed the innovation platform (CoopCycle) and the Courier team (from different countries: UK, China and Japan), and made many adjustments through feedback. For example, the target group should be narrowed down from general couriers to flexible bicycle couriers, and the work process, age-range and work experience of the target group should be redefined. Analyze their similarities and differences based on interviews to find their common concerns. Comparing Doteveryone’s report and collected data, “difficult communication” was selected as the main theme of the next research direction.

Have contacted the IWGB union (unlike traditional unions, it specifically provides assistance to those called “gig workers”, such as bicycle couriers, Uber drivers and cleaners, to help people beyond the scope of traditional unions), try to establish communication and cooperation with them. Because of the feedback before the interview, many young drivers have become members of the union.

https://gsapostgradshowcase.net/2020/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/presestion-11-scaled.jpg

Seb (a union worker) and I compiled the specific manifestations of “difficult communication” and the role of the union.

For the courier and the platform to communicate difficulties: standardized answers through AI and algorithm programs-lack of nuances and background-can do not solve real problems; encounter unexpected emergencies at work-can not get quick response help- -The courier bears the responsibility for refusing to work; the communication channel is too poor, and most of the inefficiencies are carried out through mail, which cannot bring smooth dialogue and sense of security to the courier; lack of real interaction between people; the communication rules are It is unilaterally formulated without considering the feelings of the couriers.

IWGB effect: As the advantages of trade unions in the proceedings as well as the target population to understand, so you can play the role of supervision of consultants in the rear. When problems arise in communication, they can communicate with the platform through specific situations to participate in the interests of union members (couriers).

Based on previous thoughts, the first suggestion was made. Set up two interactive parts, the sharing part and the help part.

Community (sharing) part:

The courier can share his work situation and the problems encountered in the communication interface, as well as the problems he encountered and the parts that he felt inhuman or too harsh when using the platform. The platform can give feedback based on these opinions and shared things. For the few people mentioned those useful questions adverbial clause: recommended that the platform will be the payment of allowances, reward him as improve platform library personal contribution.

Help section:

People can choose interactive buttons of different colours according to difficulty and urgency, each
. The colours represent different situations and contact information. If the flexible express company is unable to contact any staffing service and cannot solve the real problems in time, you can single-click the partner (IWGB) button, and the union will record these problems as (litigation) materials and target them They provide specific suggestions for different changes. IWGB will use its own resources to continuously contact the platform to reflect the problem of the courier. If the platform still cannot solve the problem and bring some navigation consequences to the courier, the platform must provide certain compensation; otherwise, The union will take measures to record the materials.

After giving the first suggestion back to the former replacement (Ewan), he thought that the interactive operation process the interface was too complicated and would waste a lot of time. The process can be optimized to make it easier to operate. In addition, NING MA, who met me on a similar topic when I was sending mass messages on Facebook, is also using algorithms to improve the work of gig workers. After asking her opinion, she thought that the reward point could be concretized, which was what the flex couriers really cared about. Only in this way can the work enthusiasm of couriers be enhanced and the platform is more efficient and praised by the public. After listening to her advice, I simplified the operating system process and set up a ‘wish page’ (study future plan, wish items) for each courier. When a shared suggestion or question is popular and meaningful, the platform will support his desired project and learn plan to encourage him to contribute valuable information Based on the improved proposal, I sketched some key interfaces. To determine and improve some details (such as the location of different information, the ratio of different information, the appearance of graphics, etc.), but also to determine the specific information and content of each section

Creating more visual languages ​​to display more intuitively, such as storyboards, key interactive interfaces with their relationships and process program.

For this suggestion, it can not only bring a lot of positive effects on bicycle express companies.

Courier: Couriers have more voices to express their opinions and suggestions to protect their rights.

Platform: Expand the good reputation of the platform, increase employees’ sense of belonging to the platform, and find better suggestions and directions to improve/optimize its governance structure and brand.

IWGB: Trade unions have great influence. More and more messengers accept and recognize this new and innovative trade union.

For future plans, there are mainly three things:

Verification scheme and prototype

Try to fully test and communicate with them through joint design and seminars, and solicit their opinions and suggestions on the project, to adjust the project prototype to make it more suitable for the life and habits of the target population, and to serve them better.

Redefine the role of unions

The new union (IWGB) has played an important role in safeguarding the rights of flexible delivery companies through previously collected data, but usually only appears behind the stage after the rider has trouble. I want to try to discuss the future plans of the union with the union staff (Seb). Through closer communication with the platform, can the platform play a more important role?

Collaborate with experts

Through chatting, I learned that she had just obtained the computer information system index in the United States. Her project is very similar to mine. He uses his professional programming to improve the rights of performance workers.

My project is a campaign to help families avoid getting into funeral poverty. Funeral poverty is where the price of a funeral is beyond a person’s ability to pay. It is a growing national crisis in the UK, most affecting those on the lowest incomes. In making decisions for the funeral, families may go into debt due to issues of pride and the desire to provide a ‘good’ send-off, they didn’t want to be perceived as saying that they didn’t care for the deceased. However, this is often not the wishes of the deceased.

Through my research, I found that the leading cause of funeral poverty is the lack of communication among family members. The death is still a taboo topic. If people can understand the funeral expenses and make funeral plans in advance, families are more likely to reduce unnecessary consumption.

I designed two visual tools, posters, and a toast recipe to raise people’s awareness and engage in it. It is also a campaign through social media. In the recipe, toppings on the bread represent the prices of different funeral services or products. The way of talking and designing this tombstone bread is also a process to think about your own funeral and its costs. The analogy metaphor in the design is the bread, as its shape is very similar to a tombstone, and the bread is a universal symbol in the world that meaning life and money. I hope people realize that talking about death or funerals is as necessary and ordinary as eating. Eating is also an iconic family gathering scene, where many topics occur. No matter what kind of funeral plan one chooses, the bread all tastes good. People will not choose food that exceeds their financial ability in daily life. It is the same for funerals.

In the future, my project will hold more workshops, such as chatting, cooking, and eating toast together in the community. There are some social organizations aimed at solving poverty or funeral poverty, such as Quaker Social Action, Dying Matters, and Funeral Link. This project would unite with these organizations to plan social activities in the future and make these organizations and activities more influential through design innovation.

Urban ecosystem services are vital for the well-being of residents, however, greens, as the providing elements of urban ecosystem services, some are just there but not serving people. This project is a green spaces co-creation workshop event specially designed for the community Blythswood, aiming to break through the barriers of urban ecosystem services’ delivery and ensure the residents to enjoy the well-being which comes along.

For details, please watch the video.

For research, please see the project process journal (PPJ).

Glasgow School of Art: MDes Design innovation and Service Design [2019.09–2020.09]

2020 Philip Student Service Design Challenge [2020.01–2020.05]

Roy Ascott Studio, Shanghai Institute of Visual Art-BA Techonectic Arts (Interactive Arts) [2015.09–2019.06]

How might we promote tenants connection in a large-scale co-living community?

CoBuild is an online virtual city established by metaphorical ways.

We guide tenants to metaphor the living experience as the process of operating a building a city. Users’ interests and skills are visualized as different kinds of buildings, finding similar kinds of building means the owner of them hold similar interests so that tenants can discover like-minded people using a gamification way.
As the owner of a building, the user can hold an event, keep an operator diary, or participate in other tenants’ events to gain Prosperity value. The value contributes to an offline award to stimulate spontaneous events.

The project explores how to make sustainable living easier for people in China, where awareness of sustainable living is severely lacking in most of the population, and how it can be integrated into the local cultural context. Focusing on groups of people who are aware of environmental issues but do not practice these behaviours due to various problems, the project explores the complexity and malleability of the interplay between human awareness and behaviour. It explores the complexity and plasticity of the interplay between human consciousness and behaviour, which is influenced by the individual’s background and external environment, as well as by his or her self-awareness of the relationship he or she has with the planet. As social creatures, we are always mindful of our social role, but often forget our “ecological role” in the whole ecosystem. Through research and interviews, I have rethought the relationship between consciousness and behaviour, and gained a deeper understanding of “Chinese people”.

For Chinese, what do they care more about in their daily food, clothing, housing and transportation choices? And what is the impact that family life brings to them? Lifestyle is more of an infiltration of environment, culture and family heritage. Lifestyle cannot be imposed, it needs people’s heartfelt recognition and self-choice, and the premise of recognition is neither indoctrination nor moral kidnapping, but the need to let people actually feel the “good” of it. A thousand readers have a thousand Hamlet’s. A thousand people have a thousand kinds of Hamlet. A thousand people have a thousand kinds of lives, which can be a thousand different kinds of sustainable, but each one is the choice of people’s free will, and each one can make people still be comfortable and happy to be themselves.

To relieve people’s inner anxiety and improve their mental health, the strategy of the cafe can start from convey positive perspective to foundation customers and the fan group from social media. To let them know that the cafe cares about their inner feelings so that people can establish trust with the cafe.

How might we Set up the in-store event or information design to show concern for community residents?
So that residents can consciously reflect on the pressure, then the customer trust the value of cafe brings

Hello! I am Lushan Qiao, a Service Design Student from the Innovation School of Glasgow School of Art.

I am passionate about doing things for the communities and society. Especially committed to sustainable development. This can be seen throughout both of my final year projects and my time here at GSA.

This project I focus on the development of cycling in China in the future. Cycling has always been the mode of travel advocated by the whole world, because it is of great benefits to the environment and individuals. And from the perspective of the future development trend of transportation, cycling still plays an irreplaceable role, which is also the reason why China has always advocated people to ride. However, due to the economic development speed and other factors, some data show that the number of people cycling dropped every year. In 2020, the Covid-19 began to spread around the world. The bike for people to become the most popular means of transportation. This change also brought more benefits to the environment and people’s health. Cycling played a very important role in our life now. That’s why I’m interested in this topic.

By using various methodologies to explore and solve problems. In the process I gained a lot of new knowledge and experience. I love to learn and have a motivated mindset. I think it is important to stay openminded in design and look forward to challenging myself and designs in the working world. In this special year, a lot of changes have taken place in our life. Making me feel more responsible as a designer, contribute to society and human.

There is a group of people who would be more relaxed when working remotely because they often struggle to communicate with other people, behave normally at any kind of public event and speak in front of others. In psychology, these symptoms are called social anxiety disorder (SAD). SAD is one of the most common mental health conditions, and it affects millions of people around the world. For people living with social anxiety, the workplace can be a pretty stressful place. They protect themselves the best they can by avoiding situations in which their ‘flaws’ might be seen by colleagues. Even having a conversation with others about experiencing social anxiety is not an easy thing to do for anyone feeling socially anxious. Keeping away from such a workplace seems like a good way to deal with social anxiety, but it actually makes anxiety worse.

I designed a toolkit for the workplace and named it Cheerboard. It is suitable for use in a team or an entire company. For those who are about to face public occasions or stressful social engagements, Cheerboard provides a card to write down their work tasks. They can either choose to do this anonymously or disclose their name. Other members of the team can stick different gesture symbols on the board to encourage the sufferer, or they can also leave a message to tell the sufferer their own experiences or feelings. The only principle is to encourage employees to actively express their encouragement for others.

The doctor-patient relationship has always been a big contradiction in China. According to the White Paper on the Practice of Chinese Doctors, published by the Chinese Medical Doctors Association in 2018, 66% of doctors experienced conflicts with patients, and more than 30% were treated violently.

However, many diseases, especially those that require long-term care, are very dependent on the doctor-patient relationship. So I chose patients who need long-term care as my main users.

After a lot of primary and secondary research, I found that the reasons affecting the doctor-patient relationship are mainly caused by insufficient medical knowledge of patients, low communication efficiency between doctors and patients, and low participation of patients in the decision-making of care plans.

In order to solve these problems, I designed a PERSONALISED CARE MODEL to help stakeholders including doctors, nurses, third-party support organizations, patients and their families to co-create the patients’ plans.