TRW Revitalization — YuCheng Huang

We designed participatory-experience activities for citizens to connect physically and mentally with their past memories and imagine a collective future for the Taipei Railway Workshop.

Context
9 Months, Industrial Project, Commissioned by Taiwan Ministry of Culture

My Role
Project Manager, Experience Designer with 11 members

Tools
Illustration, Photoshop, After Effects, Words, Excel

PROBLEM

Everyone remembers Taipei Railway Workshop (TRW) individually, but how to inherit the past and connect with the present life as a collective identity?

Taipei Railway Workshop (TRW) is a national heritage that embodies a hundred-year history, cultural identities, and people’s memory of this land, tracking back to Japanese colonization, Taiwan Restoration, and today’s modern society. However, TRW got shut down, the following questions emerged in terms of how to carry the herited cultures and communities’ memory; and how to reuse the relatively huge space of TRW. It’s a complex problem.

SOLUTION

The on-site participatory design will open up the future of the Taipei Railway Workshop and will form collective expectations that bridge the memory.

"Taipei Railway Workshop Revitalization Plan" is a new and developing concept that involves the study of the past, space proposals, and on-site participatory activities, and aim to open up a creative and shared vision of the future Taipei Railway Workshop rather than a direct tracking the past.

RESEARCH

“Taipei Railway Workshop” is the key-user to all end-users who remember TRW in different ways.

How to handle a complex and dynamic cultural carrier is a great challenge. We saw Taipei Railway Workshop as a user to end-users. Based on its key historical-events, we defined the core stakeholders (key groups) as our first step. We also found that each stakeholder has a different way of remembering the Taipei Railway Workshop and has different claims.

THE MAIN INSIGHT

Most of people think that Taipei Railway Workshop must to be “living” for the unique identity formation.

We conducted five panel-interviews for each interest group and got these insights after sorting out all motivations, pain points, and expectaions. We found that all three themes comes together for one claim: systematically preserve overall TRW area and connect with communities to cultivate community and even national identity.

Hence, we thought "On-Site Experience Design" is the key attribute, and provided three following solutions:

1. On-site participatory exploration
2. Theme-based exhibitions and forums
3. Call-for-submission activity

DESIGN

How might we help Taipei Railway Workshop connect communities and create meanings over time?

With the insights ablove, we dived a layer deep into the actual steps that help users prepare themselves to create collective images for future Taipei Railway workshop. To make the mental process progressive and contextual, we broke participatory activities into four parts:

Step 1 : On-site Exploration

In order to allow users to rethink the future of the Taipei Railway Workshop, users first visited a 30-minute exploration route on site, and compared the design images scanned by the QRcode hidden in the corner of the factory with their location to rediscover different futures.

Step 2 : Theme-Based Exhibitions and Forums

After users explore the factory, six themed exhibitions about the Taipei Railway Workshop help them to re-think the spaces and the relationships with communities and facilitate their formation to the future.

Step 3 : Draw your imagination of Taipei Railway Workshop

With the participatory experience above, users can decide whether to participate in the call-for-submission activity. This activity provides two graphic templates for quick ideation, and users can draw their ideas on paper.

Step 4 : Display your imagination proudly

Users can not only participate in the transformation process of the Taipei Railway Workshop, but also see more imaginations of others and encourage more people to contribute their ideas and voices, forming a collective identity.

THE FINAL DOCUMENT

The 10-minute documentary

Taipei Railway Workshop Revitalization contributes to an integrated cultural vision developed in the progress of urban civilization. As a result of collective consciousness and individual self-awareness, they illustrate the outlook of TRW and reflect its history. TRW should be considered in urban reconstruction blueprints in an attempt to form a city with in-depth cultures and self-identity.

(PS: The documentary includes six theme-based research and spatial design proposals as well as parts of participatory desgin. The spatial design proposals are completed by six international architectural firms, including Architect - Shingo Masuda + Katsuhisa Otubo from Japan, Oyler Wu Collaborative from the U.S., Shen Ting Tseng Architects from Taiwan, etc.)

The visual design

It required an unexpected effort to cover all touch-points. To consistently visualize event information at different touch-points, we designed a series of products including brochures, posters, banners, social-media pages, and an event website.

TAKEAWAYS

What I’d do differently next time?

The project was not only my first job after graduating with my bachelor of architecture but also my first service design project. Such a chance taught me that architectural design and service design are both familiar but distinct, both are designing about the experience of users' lives, but the execution time of service design is relatively short and the result is relatively effective and significant. The process of execution is full of challenges, so several aspects deserve to reflect on:

Empathy help boil down problem closer to real user needs. When the Taipei Railway Workshop was closed, the initial plan was to develop a large area into a high-end department store district. However, based on our user research, users want a dynamic and living railway park, not just a general museum and department store. As a result, the service design guideline has gradually become clear and the exhibition venue has changed from a museum-like place to an on-site auditorium for participatory events that cater to the expectations of users. Therefore, I believe that focusing on empathizing with users and refining the most fundamental needs can help the project move forward effectively.

Continuously eliminate information asymmetries to ensure team collaboration. Due to the huge scope of this service design, in the beginning, the service design guideline was not yet clear. The client and our design team had disagreements on the design idea of public participation since the client couldn't understand the proposal submitted by our design team. Therefore, as a project manager, it is necessary to act as a bridge for information interpretation. Specifically, transmit digestible information in their language to each party to coordinate the development approach. Afterward, I have a better understanding to navigate among differences of opinion, which helps facilitate the project.

Thank you for reading!