P ORT-
FOLIO
Ruizheng Lyu
selected works
CV
I’m a recently graduate student with multi-disciplinary backgrounds. I’m seeking for internships / jobs in creative industry, preferably around branding, user experience and strategy.
EXPERIENCE
EDUCATION Sep 2018 - Dec 2019 University of the Arts London Interaction Design Communication 2:1 MA degree. Jul 2017 - Sep 2018 Gap year Started learning design Preparing for MA application Sep 2013 - Jul 2017 Tianjin University BEng Automation Engineering GPA 85.17/100
SKILLS Design Illustrator, Photoshop, InDesign, Blender (3D modelling & animation), Premiere & After Effects (Beginner) User Experience Fast Prototype Making and Iteration Human-Cantered Research User Testing Programming Experience: JavaScript, C++, MATLAB Hardware Experience: Arduino Kit, Electronic Engineering
Works on display: Bind Together.
Mar-May: Imperial War Museum (fee-paid work) Co-producer in Family-Trail team Designed prototypes for interactive installations with 20 years shelf life in the second world war gallery to attract family visitors. My job includes interviews, making personas, ideation, fast-prototype iteration, most hand-made prototypes making, testing with museum family visitors. We got great review with our playful prototypes from both the museum team and the family visitors in the last open test.
Feb-Apr: Elephant Park Phase 2 (fee-paid work) Member of the Local Resident team We work for the stakeholder to engage local residents around and make the most of the park. My job includes ideation based on primary and secondary research, making prototype and testing. We delivered a final report for Lendlease and their review is: ‘the findings were very helpful, and we were impressed with the attention to detail and enthusiasm’.
Jan-Mar: Collaboration with The Design Museum Member of the White Rabbit team This is a collaborative design project with the design museum on the show ‘Histories and Myths of the 21st-Century Home’. We focused on the theme ’Other Dreams of Home’. My job includes: Researches around surrealism and critical design, generate ideas and prototypes under limited exhibition conditions, icon design, testing with the audience, concept and story design, performance design, costume making. The final design and performance showed on 16 March 2019, we attracted lots of family visitors.
Feb-Mar: Design Academy (Design Council) Member of the team focusing on ‘Changing attitudes towards ageing and tackling prejudice’. In this workshop-based project we generate new ideas and services for wellbeing of the elder group. My job includes analyse interviews and data，ideation, story board creating, presentation.
CONTACT
LANGUAGE Chinese: English: German & Japanese:
2019 (Design related) Sep-Oct: London Design Festival
Mother tongue Proficient Beginner
E-mail: Phone: Instgram:
lyurz1996@gmail.com 074 2252 8878 rzlyu_96 (daily progress posts)
C ONTENT
Ultra Care Page 4-13
Family Trail Page 14-23
Bound Together Page 24-33
Elephant Park Page 34-41
1
Ultra Care UltraCare explores the possibilities of how to bridge the gap between doctors and patients. It treats illness as the third object that exists outside of the patient’s body, outside of the doctor’s profession. UltrCare is a collaborating design with doctors and professional-based. It gives patients the right to make their pain visible and tangible. It aims to give patients better expression and doctors better comprehension.
△△ Interaction design △△ Installation △△ Individual project
Start Point: Tense and Conflictual Doctor-Patient Relationships My parents are both doctors, and I have witnessed a deterioration in the doctor-patient relationship over the years. In this project, I started by questioning ‘why’.
In 2013, the Wenling murder case alarmed whole China. The criminal Lian Enqing rushed to the hospital and killed a doctor in an extremely cruel way. This kicked off the extremely tense relationship between doctors and patients over the years. What went wrong? The medical system, public opinion, scarce medical resources, government spending ... these all seem to be responsible. But when I looked at this case from the human-cantered design perspective, I found that we ignored the communication gap between doctors and patients. The criminal Lien Qing is a patient who had suffered from Empty Nose Syndrome for a long time. He felt not been understand or listened to when he seeks medical treatment. This led him to gradually develop a conspiracy theory about doctors. At the same time, the unfortunate doctors faced decades of hard work.
Although this is an extreme case, we can see that both the working environment of the doctors and the experience of the patients are very poor. The neglect of humanity on both sides makes it difficult build trust.
Observation:
Cervical Screening Process in China and UK
Research:
the Gap between Doctors and Patients But what is the gap? From clinical observation and data analysis, George (2015) argues that the doctors are always powerful at manipulating the manifestations of disease. But the patients don’t care about all the professional terms and analysis, they worry about maintaining functionality and quality of life. I had a day working with my mother a year ago. Her main job that day was to do cervical screenings for the patients. I found that many patients were “arranged for physical examination”. They did not know what was going to happen and showed a frightened and embarrassed expression when asked to undress from the waist down.
There seems to be a two-way reification between doctors and patients: doctors tend to treat patients as diseases themselves, and patients tend to treat doctors as medical science itself. Medical expertise gives doctors authority and put them on a high position. This makes them easily ignoring the care, listening and understanding that patients need. Later I learned about the same exam process in the UK. Which is a much better experience. Women over the age of 25 will receive an email suggesting that they conduct an annual cervical screening. A detailed description of the process on the NHS website is available. The information on the website is very clear, they even give advice like ‘putting what you can leave during the exam, such as skirts or long jumpers.” “Bring your people to support.’ (National Health Service, 2019) This made me think that maybe we can use design to bridge the gap.
So, when talking about doctor patient communication Ha argues that (2010), ‘A more patient-centred encounter results in better patient as well as doctor satisfaction.’ He also explained the Information exchange is the dominant communication model, and the health consumer movement has led to the current model of shared decision making and patient-centred communication.’
Research: Understanding Patients from Pseudoscience Perspective Homeopathy, naturopathy, acupuncture, alternative medicine is very popular, especially with those suffering from chronic disease. According to a new report by Grand View Research, the market is expanding and expected to generate a revenue of more than 200 billion dollars by 2026.”
For example, teleological thinking, which is a default explanatory mode focused on purpose-based or functionbased explanations, may help explain belief in alternative medical practices which argue that energy intends to cause or prevent harm (Hecht, 2018).
The medicine are always fighting with alternative ones. But I want to argue that the existence of alternative medicines is not necessarily a bad thing. By analysing why patients choose them to help, we might understand what they really need.
I took the arguments from the book ‘The Pseudoscience Wars’ written by May (2017) and apply them to pseudo-medicine. If we look at the pseudo-medicine without discrimination, they ‘are often two sides of the same coin’. They consistent in their final goal: alleviating the pain, finding the cause and curing it. Medical science ‘can often come across as overly complex, boring and irrelevant’ to patients. On the other side, pseudo-medicine does not have a rigorous scientific argument to prove its utility. And many pseudomedical theories involving the existence of supernatural forces which cannot be confirmed. But they are exciting, appealing and ‘what people want to hear, want to believe’.
This conflict between ‘the truth’ and ‘what people want to believe’ can be attributed to some inherent cognitive bias. (Lobato et al., 2014; Pennycook, Fugelsang, and Koehler, 2015)
Another example is essentialist. This occurs when an individual think that an entity has necessary, immutable, and inherent characteristics. One example is the naturalistic fallacy expressed in some pseudo-medicine like naturopathy (Gorski, 2014, 2018), where “natural” cures are inherently good or more effective and “artificial” cures are inherently bad or less effective.
Cognitive bias and scientific thinking might reach a state of ‘co-existence’ (Hecht, 2018), the subsequent learning of relevant scientific information only suppresses earlier naive theories rather than replacing them.
This concept of ‘co-existence’ can explain the differences between doctors and patients. Therefore, I think the problem of doctor-patient relationship is not just to let doctors adhere to the ‘patient-centred’ treatment process or ‘fake pseudoscience’. Instead ,We should be aware that both patients and doctors are complex systems of bounded rationality (Simon, 1996). This is the notion proposed by Herbert Simon in his book the science of artificial, he argues that we humans as bounded rationality systems, ‘knowing everything’ is not the solution to the problems existing in our society.
Research: How to Bridge the Gap? In order to bridge the gap, I introduce two design thinking: Adversarial Design and Actor Network Theory. Adversarial design argues that by labelling an object as adversarial, its aim is ‘to call attention to the contestational relations and experiences aroused through the designed thing and the way it expresses dissensus.’ (Disalvo, 2012) By revealing the conditions of D_P issues and relations, this adversarial design can identify ‘new terms and themes for connotation’ and ‘new trajectories for action’.
ANT believes that both human and non-human factors are ‘actors’, the relationship between actors will be organised into a network of interconnected and may affect each other. The way they shape each other is the main focus in ANT.
Case Study & Contribution
“With this interactive punching bag you can really join them in their fight by stepping in the ring and punch cancer in the cells, raising funds for cancer research punch by punch.” Fight Cancer, Thijs Biersteker Alternate treatments poster&cards to support patients with chronic pain getting rid of Opioids. The Pain Project by UC Davis Center for Design in the Public Interest
And there should be two features of this design: First, it’s tangible. According to Dourish’s design thinking, We should not only rely on ‘the planned and rational abstraction assumed by much of the older work in HCI.’, but ‘tool or symbol becomes present– at–hand may be crucial to the individual’s learning and to the differences between individuals.’ (Dourish, 2004) Second, it’s sentient. According to Scarry’s argument, we have “the ongoing assumption of animism” in our mind, we are “relying on artefacts to do a specific job (relief of this or that pain)”. And “it is designers who put all this sentience into artefacts”. (Scarry, 1987)
The contribution I want to achieve: By opening the black box between doctors and patients, the illness is created as a third object, and thus provides an opportunity for both sides to speak and be heard at the same time.
Ideation Process: Inspirations and Story Boards of Ideas Interactive Pills:
Interactive Plaster on Model:
Interactive Projection:
The pill that can listen and understand
The patient can decorate the model with E-textile to represent different pain characteristics.
The third idea is Inspired by Shamanism and Taoism.
As well as using heat and vibration to make you fell better
Create a space for patients to see their illness extracting outside of their body.
The E-textile piece makes the pain tangible and interactive.
Plus - Minus - Interesting Placebo Effect Electronic screen display Discursive instead of conversational
Plus - Minus - Interesting Tangible materials Using the wooden model Character of pain
Plus - Minus - Interesting Pain on the body Technically too complicated Wearable pain
Emm.. I........ SHARP
BURN
SWELL
COLIC
drawing your pain on your body
How do you feel today?
I truly understand that! Take some pills to help you release the pain...
moving around with the drawing
interaction with someone else
Put the pill in the place of the pain and feel the heat / vibration...
extracting the pain out of body
Iteration Process: Case Studies, Interviews and Iteration Technical Research
Medical ultrasound machine, nuclear magnetic resonance machine, and CT scanning machine, it seems that they are all using some kind of energy wave to transform the invisible illness inside the solid body into a visible two-dimensional image. When I interviewed my parents about these machines, they mentioned the ‘over-examination’ phenomenon on some patients. Although there is no need to waste money, they still insist on unnecessary medical examinations. They long to see what’s happening inside their bodies.
‘What a Loving, and Beautiful World’ by Teamlab, Japan AI: More Than Human Exhibition at the Barbican Centre
While these machines help doctors diagnose and treat the condition by visualizing invisible pain. On the contrary, can we help visualizing “invisible” feelings to help patients communicate better with their doctors and be understood easier?
Story Board
Graphic Design
draw on the patch
Scanning color and converting to real-time music composition Yuri Suzuki
Different feelings of period cramp pain &
attatch the path on your body
ROTATION
Art pieces around pain PATTERN
We cannot define a set of vocabulary or logic for patients to materialize their pain. On the contrary, allowing them to express their own painful feelings is a design closer to the patient. Furthermore, this cannot build a bridge between doctors and patients, and may even have the opposite effect.
MOTION
scanning & interacting
Technical Practice: Overall Flow Chart & Experiments JAVASCRIPT PROGRAMMING STRUCTURE
co n
Screen
l tro
*analog input *digital input
c
trol n o
Blender 3D model & animation
shape motion speed rotation
ff il e s
Arduino buttons
t .g l support
Arduino scanner
crea t
e
scanning show on phone
QR code
create
MODELING & ANIMATING IN BLENDER
create plaster
new web page
Javascript (Three.js & P5.js)
Practice: Hardware, 3D Printing & Trifold Design FURTHER DEVELOPMENT
ARCADE
Interaction Design Communication Degree Show
BUTTON
The patient's records on the mobile terminal can continuously record the pain state and automatically generate a report, which can be viewed by the doctor at the next consultation.
ON BOARD 3D PRINTING MATERIALS
CIRCUIT
At present, there are only a few choices of pain shapes for this project, but through Javascript programming, more permissions can be opened to patients. For example, patients can change the sharpness of their pain. And present more and more related to the medical professional dynamics such as tearing, acid etching.
RESEARCH
04-09.12.2019, Well Gallery, London College of Communication
POSITION
I SEE YOU
CONTACT: @ rzlyu_96 lyurz1996@gmail.com
SOLDERING
3D PRINTED BUTTONS
Started from asking why the relationship has deteriorated to this state, I found that the communication gap between doctors and patients might be the root reason. In UltraCare, I tried to bridge this gap by making the illness a third object that exists outside of the patient’s body, outside of the doctor’s profession. So that the unbalanced doctor-patient relationship can become a stable triangle.
Have you ever experienced pain? Any kind of pain ... When someone asked, ‘how are you?’ You found it’s so hard to describe your feelings, that you almost wanted to pull out the pain in your body so that others can see and touch it.
CONTENT/ STORYBOARD With UltraCare, patients can select the shape of the pain by pressing keys, change the dynamics of the pain by the knob, adjust the speed of the pain by the slider, and adjust the direction of the pain by joystick.
UltraCare is based on a deep research around doctor-patient relationship. This is a very special interpersonal relationship, which should be mutual trust and dependence. But in recent years, doctor-patient relationships have been very tense in China. There were even vicious incidents that led to injuries or even death of doctors.
ULTRA CARE
plaster painter
UltraCare is inspired by the medical ultrasonic machine. It will still be used in the hospital, but the scene is mostly during the consultation.
The final version of the illness will generate a web page and a QR code on plaster.
The doctor will first ask the patient where the pain is, then lead the patient to UltraCare.
By place the plaster on the surface of the skin and scanning it with any mobile devices, the 3D model can be seen on any screen.
Final Outcome: Exhibition:
Interaction:
Please check this link for vedio: https://youtu.be/_7aAIALVbHA
2
IWM _ Family Trail IWM_Family Trial is a family-focused project that will be integrated into the new second world war galleries in the imperial war museum. We try to tell family-friendly personal stories to engage the largest audience. Our work is to ideate, develop and prototype war roles with clear marked activities. △△ Experience design △△ Exhibition △△ Team project
Desk Research: What makes a successful family museum visit?
At the beginning of this project, we collaborated with the staff in Imperial War Museum, taking their work experience into consideration, and summing up 10 points for “what makes a successful family museum visit?�:
1 Enable sensory experience
2 Creates a sense of
3 Has a sense of wider
4 Has strong links to the gallery
5 Is immersive and fun
6 Has lasting impact
7 Encourage family
8 Engage different members
9 Is fully accessible
subject matter
interaction
excitement and awe
of the family unit
10
purpose
Incorporates different skills and learning styles (visual, auditory, kinesthetic)
Quantitative Research: Observation in 1ww Gallery and Personae George There is a gallery for the 1st World War in Museum with lots of installations and activities for visitors. So, we take our notes and do observation there. Surprisingly we found lots of young visitors in the gallery, some with family some with school. This gave us lots of observation opportunities and helps us better understand children’s behavior patterns in war museums. We also observed similarities between many adult audiences and children. Based on these observations, we created 5 personae for the family audience:
Age: 5 Gender: Male Ethnicity: British Learning Style: Kinesthetic Family: Mom & Dad & sister (2) Likes: Cars, Airplanes, Tanks Doesn’t like: Reading & Writing
Lucy
Arabi
Age: 16
Age: 8
Gender: Female
Gender: Female
Ethnicity: British
Ethnicity: Indian/British
Learning Style: Combination
Learning Style: Visual & Auditory
Family: Dad
Family: Mom & Dad
Likes: Physics, History
Likes: Reading books, Watching films
Doesn’t like: Soap Operas
Doesn’t like: Noisy places / Sports
*preparing for GCSE *visits IWM for research often
Wei Zhang Age: 38 Gender: Male Ethnicity: Chinese Learning Style: Visual & Kinesthetic Family: Wife (35), Son (5) Job: History Teacher Likes: Telling stories Doesn’t like:Math *want to bring new storytelling into his classes *Temporary Visitor in London
Emma Age: 65 Gender: Female Ethnicity: German / British Learning Style: Auditory Family: Grandchildren (12) & (10) Job: History Teacher Likes: Historical Fiction Doesn’t like: “War jokes” *lives in the neighborhood *Temporary Visitor in London
Qualitative Research: Interview with Family Visitors Based on the desk research and personae, we conducted in-depth interviews with museum audiences around three questions: 1. Please describe your best/worst memories in (IWM) museums that your children have/ you have with your children. 2.
Why do you come here today?
3.
What is your children’s favorite activities / hobby / learning style?
I interviewed four groups:
Two teachers.
A lady with two daughters, 5 and 8yo.
A gentleman with his 8yo son.
A lady with 4yo son and 6yo daughter.
⁕⁕ There are international students in their class, they have difficulty reading large text introductions.
⁕⁕ They came here because the father loves this museum.
⁕⁕ They came to IWM quite regular, both the father and the son are fans of history & wars.
⁕⁕ The children love large installations, they can play inside for a long time.
⁕⁕ Both the children love learning by doing, they can change everything in the museum to their toys.
⁕⁕ The boy is pretty much a visual learner, but he still loves touching if permitted.
⁕⁕ The younger child is keener to touch everything. But both of them love multisensory learning.
⁕⁕ The lady had to keep an eye on her children all the time to avoid annoying other audience.
⁕⁕ IWM is a great place for the communication between them.
⁕⁕ It’s hard for them to sit and watch videos, they keep talking and mimicking whatever they saw.
Iteration & Prototype: Character 1_Code Breaker
Code Breakers, led by Alan Turning, are credited with helping to shorten the course of the war. In the design of this interactive activity, the audience can experience the working environment and intensity of the code breaker through a role-playing way. This will make them (especially children) more impressed and have a deeper understanding of this history. This way of accomplishing tasks also provides opportunities for communication between parents and children.
2Then the timer will start to count, and they will hear some Morse code. With the Morse code chart, they need to translate the code to a specified number.
Story Board
1There will be a desktop place for this activity in the middle of the
gallery. On the top of the desk is a map of the UK divided by two coordinates. There will be two players for this game. Once they put the headphones on and press the start button, they will hear their mission explained on the radio.
3
If both of the players press the right number, there will be green light blinking on corresponding dot on the map, and cheering sound played on the radio. If anyone made it wrong or the time runs out, there will be red light and message of failure on the radio.
Based on feedback from museum staff, we made a second version of the design, replacing the map with a news of the war, which is more in line with history facts. In our final test, different audiences have different preferences for the two options. But they all emphasized that it would be better if there were real historical stories as context.
The actual sound speed of the Morse code is much faster than the way than audience can hear. We can add a real piece of the sound in the radio after the game, and mention that in the object text.
Feedback
Morse Code Chart
Story Board
Map of the U.K.
Timer
Two coordinates
The timer can add extra pressure for the players, as well as give a hint of the duration of the interaction process.
with buttons of
numbers Headphone
Iteration & Prototype: Character 2_Journalist
War reporting came of age between 1939 and 1945. The global conflagration of World War II elicited a massive response from the free press around the world. In countries under repressive regimes, print journalism and radio continued as well, but their effectiveness was compromised by rigid central control and the dictates of party propaganda. In this project, we encountered many restrictions. ⁕⁕ First, there is not much space allocated for this activity in the gallery, only small table spaces not far from the wall are available. ⁕⁕ Second, there is no sufficient budget for digital screens. Third, we need to keep all designs fixed on the table so that they cannot be taken away by audience. ⁕⁕ Last but not least, we need to make sure that even if the interactive parts are damaged, the whole design is still meaningful and self-explanatory.
Based on these restrictions and the further user testing process, we created this prototype. The camera and the typewriter are both fixed on the table. Only the shutter button on the camera and the enter button on the typewriter can be pressed. And by pressing them, the audience can observe the news paper image or text changed on the wall, from “the Dunkirk success” to “the Dunkirk failure”. After a few seconds, they will change back automatically.
Story Board
Newspaper
Camera
Typewriter
We got quite good feedback from the family visitors during the testing process. Children love these models and they understand the “fake news” quite easily with the interaction. Unexpectedly we found that for some younger kids the camera itself is so attracting, they use phones to take photos and haven’t seen a real camera before. We also found that these objects are great conversation starter for the families, the parents will start to talk about the grandparents’ stories in the old times to the children.
Feedback
Iteration & Prototype: Character 1_War Artist
A war artist creates a visual account of the impact of war. The works produced by war artists illustrate and record many aspects of war and the individual’s experience of war. Artists record military activities in ways that cameras and written word cannot. Their art collects and distils the experiences of people who endure it. the artists and their artwork affect how subsequent generations view military conflicts.
In the gallery, four distinct theatres of war will be visually presented with the aid of large scale moving media pieces as the backdrop to the objects and showcases, each represent different landscapes of the war: North Africa: desert, sand; the Soviet Union: fields, forest; Pearl Harbour/East Asia/Pacific: ocean, jungle.
It seemed like a great idea to let the audience create their own war artwork after viewing the exhibition, but we observed three problems with similar projects in many other museums. ⁕⁕ The first is that it will seriously affect the experience of the audience if the pens runs out of ink. ⁕⁕ Second, the existence of pens might stain other facilities in the gallery. We hope to avoid any loose parts as such. ⁕⁕ Third, lots of audience are afraid of creative art with just pen and blank paper, we need to make this activity more accessible.
Considering these, we came up with a design based on the colourful mega sketch board. There will be four easels, each facilitated with a mega sketch board with a build-in colour plate and some stamps represents the specific landscape. All loose parts are attached to the easel. The audience can create with the help of the stamps and colours, anything on the mega sketch board can be wiped, and there are opportunities for the audience to co-create.
Story Board
Story Board
Discriptions
Test with IWM staffs
Camel imitation
Mega Sketch Board This project is popular with both the museum staff and the audience during out test. Although created with just paper cuts, everyone can understand the design easily and having fun creating arts. Some kids even try to imitate the camels on the paper. We also received suggestions that it would be better if the “stamps� are replaced with real-art pieces created by war artists at that time, using the old-time art to create a collage.
Stamps
3
Bound Together What are we talking about when we say “sustainability”? Do we realize the subtle but intimate relations between ourselves and the whole world? This project incorporates human into the aquaponics system through acupuncture in order to allow the audience to feel the system, its success and its struggles. △△ Interaction design △△ Installation △△ Individual Project
Desk Reaesrch Stage 1: Design with Neotribe
Bound together is an individual project under the brief ‘design with neotribe’. In this brief, with the definition of the “neotribe” in modern societies, we want to bring back human to the center by using ethnographic methods in design.
I found a neotribe called “the Agriculture mavericks” on meetup. They are a group of people focused on the sustainability of food system; they believe that design is the most efficient way of solving these challenges. The “residents” of this neotribe combines people from various backgrounds. They are based on the “Green Lab”, a lab like place for collaborations in Bermondsey.
What is a “neotribe”? ⁕⁕ A neotribe is a group of people gathering together by some shared values and purposes. ⁕⁕ A neotribe is an emerging social practice, it represents the dynamics of weaving in society. ⁕⁕ A neotribe does not have strict hierarchies, and it might lack organization.
ENGINEER
AGRITECH
FARMER
GREENLAB
HYDROPONICS MAKER SPACE
ENTREPRENEUR
AQUAPONICS GROW SPACE
GATE KEEPER
JOURNALIST DESIGNER
INSECTS
LONG-TERM RESIDENTS
SHARED KITCHEN FUNGI
VISITORS
BIO LAB
STUDENT RESEARCHER SCIENTIST
ALGAE
AGRICULTURAL MAVERICKS
MATERIAL LAB MICRO FOOD BACTERIA
Qualitative Research: Workshops, Events & Interviews As an anthropological research method, I joined the Agriculture Mavericks. I participated in monthly events, visited the Green Lab a few times and interviewed some of the members. With these researches, I found that they shared a common concern on how to make people accept a more sustainable way of life. Just as the “gatekeeper” Gregson said, they want to turn people’s view half a degree to sustainability”.
Gate Keeper (runs the Green Lab for 4 years)
Longterm Resident
Meet-up Event Visitor
“My purpose is to turn people’s view half a degree to the sustainability, which will become a big shift over their lifetime.”
“I’m confused and depressed for what I do as a fashion designer, so I do research around sustainable textiles now”.
“If I am retired, I’ll definitely become a farmer! That’s a heavy work but I enjoy it.”
“I’m strongly against the food-controlling huge cooperations and I’m trying to help build business and organizations to fight against them.”
“This community does more than providing me a with professional lab area, it had helped me to conduct research and get first-hand experience.”
“It’s fascinating to see how they use these technologies to make a difference, that’s quite a magic for me!”
Becoming a Member: Aquaponic System Experiments As a member of the Agriculture Mavericks, I choose the aquaponics as the direction to go deeper. Aquaponics is the combination of aquaculture (raising fish) and hydroponics (the soil-less growing of plants) that grows fish and plants together in one integrated system. With the help of the microbes (nitrifying bacteria), the fish waste can provide an organic food source for plants. The plants naturally filter the water for the fish in return.
With the help of the comity as well as an experienced aquaponics farmer who I met in the aquatic design center, I tried to build my own small-scale aquaponic system. This last about two months. With this immersive daily experience, the biggest change in my life is not having a fish tank in the kitchen, but I gradually caring more about the sustainability of my daily choice. The intimate relationship between me and my aquaponic system made me thinking in a sustainable way and paying more attention to the nature around.
Process of Building a Small Scale Aquaponic System
FISH FOOD
Desk Research Stage 2: Beyond the Green Lables Researches showed that in poor areas, the food loss during agriculture, postharvest and processing stage is a much severe problem than the food waste (after consumption). This is due to the lack of planting technology and imperfect food production and supply chain management. (Deloitte, 2015) Plastic packages look not sustainable at all, but it ‘serves as a valuable resource in preventing food waste, saving money and protecting the environment.’ (American Chemistry Council, 2016) Is that a good way to grow everything by yourself and create your own homemade farm? Or it’s something we do as a placebo for the food waste we made? This story sounds familiar. One person listened to a radio telling about the aquaponics. He thought that was a great idea, so he bought an aquaponic system the next day. He felt excited at first but got tired of all the extra work a week later. So, he started to eat take-out food again. What happened to his fish and plants? They finally died due to his long-term travel. The aquaponic system ended up in the dustbin in his kitchen. Together with the expired food he bought from the supermarket.
We cannot ignore the embedded “lazy” human nature. Even when we are trying to solve the “saving the planet” problem. Instead of taking advantage of the ‘sustainability’ idea and build a successful business. What can we do beyond the “Green Labels”?
Deloitte (2015) Reducing Food Loss Along African Agricultural Value Chains. Available at: https://www2.deloitte.com/content/dam/Deloitte/ za/Documents/consumer- business/ZA_FL1_ReducingFoodLossAlongAfricanAgriculturalValueChains.pdf (Accessed: 07 March, 2019) American Chemistry (2016) Reducing Food Waste Through Plastic Packaging. Available at: https://plastics.americanchemistry.com/factsheets-and-infographics/Reducing-Food- Waste-Through-Plastic-Packaging.pdf(Accessed: 07 March, 2019)
Desk Research Stage 2: Organic Solidarity & Acupuncture Just like the shared goal between the Green Lab members, changing people’s mindset to sustainability is much more important than the business. With the experience of building an aquaponic system, I found that the “circulation” idea is so important in sustainable systems. But we tend to ignore the “circulation”, in both micro and macro ways. How to make the connections between human and the circulated systems in nature? I found similar thinking from sociology and traditional Chinese medicine to help build this bridge:
“Organic Solidarity”
“Acupuncture”
The notion “Organic Solidarity” was first proposed by Emile Durkheim as the way the modern societies works. He explained that this kind of interdependence holds society together.
Acupuncture is one of the most commonly used treatments in traditional Chinese medicine. It regards the human body as a whole of circulation, every acupuncture point has some effects on its flow. Treating the acupuncture points can help heal the human body.
The analogy here is that organic society is like a human body with individual organs each doing their own specialised job to keep the whole system working. (Durkheim, 2018)
The key in Chinese medicine ideology is holistic and dialectical thinking, which was represented by the simple Taiji diagram.
Introducing new thinking from other regions not only helps me understand deeper around the philosophy in system thinking and sustainability but also gave me the idea of connecting the notion of ‘qi‘ to the aquaponic system. I decided to redesign the interactions between the aquaponics and the human body to make the audience realize that we are connected in a huge network of ecosystems. And through sustainable ways of producing food like aquaponics, we are healing together with the earth. Durkheim, E. (2018). The division of labor in society. In Inequality (pp. 55-64). Routledge. Available at: http://fs2.american.edu/dfagel/www/Class%20Readings/ Durkheim/Division%20Of%20Labor%20Final%20Version.pdf (Accessed: 12 April, 2019) VanderPloeg, K. (2009). ‘Acupuncture in modern society’, Journal of acupuncture and meridian studies, 2(1), pp.26-33.
Iteration Process: Interactive Installation Story Boards 1.1
1.2
1.3
neotribe
Perturbance PH
PH
23°C 67%
23°C 67%
Feed-forward Controller Input
Arduino
Feedback Controller
Mearing Element
Effector
Social Process
Mearing Element
⁕⁕ A table-top mini aquaponic system ⁕⁕ Growing herbs and feeding fish as pets
2.1
⁕⁕ Use the sound of circulating water to represent the sustainable thinking
⁕⁕ Redesign the bell siphon to draw a parallel between my neotribe and the “bell siphon”.
2.2
PH
2.3
PH 23°C 67%
23°C 67%
23°C 67%
Arduino
2.4
PH
PH
23°C 67%
⁕⁕ The bell siphon is the “feedforward controller”
Arduino
⁕⁕ Making human work for aquaponics
⁕⁕ Let people feel the aquaponic system
⁕⁕ Generating power for the pump
⁕⁕ Wearable device
Arduino
⁕⁕ Giving the aquaponic system rights to “speek” ⁕⁕ Non-human centred design
Arduino
⁕⁕ Collect data from the aquaponic system and control the wearable parts
Iteration Process: Wearable Parts Design & Sustainable Materials Design & Making Plaster model
Brainstorm
Re-styling Loofa Material
Dying Jute String
Sewing on Plaster Model
Interactive Installation
The data
collected from the aquaponic system can control the vibration mode. The vibration motors are been put on the acupuncture points.
The interaction
Within the appropriate lightness and temperature range, the vibration will simulate normal heartbeats. When the data went out of the range, it will simulate the heartbeats under stress: the systolic phase of the ventricular atrium will shorten during the diastolic phase, and the longer diastolic phase will shorten more.
The wearable part
is made of loofah and stitched with beetroot dyed jute rope. These are also suitable plants for aquaponics. The stitching line also represent the acupuncture channels.
Exhibition & Presentation
I got chances to present this work on Eva London design conference and London design festival.
4
Elephant Park
for local residents
As a park, how to engage local residents with multi-cultural backgrounds? This project is a service system created for the developing phase2 elephant park in central London. We encourage local residents to participate and make the most of the park by using different installations, public facilities and mobile platforms. △△ Service design △△ Public Area △△ Team project
Desk Research:
Proportion and number of residents by age group (2015)
Geographic & Demographics
Number 4000
11980 Residents
3000 2000 1000
Elephant Park Phase2
0
0
15
25
45
65
85
Age Group
Proportion of residents by BME group (Census 2011)
7%
ix ed
Elephant Park will be Central London’s largest new park to be built in the past 70 years. The development consists of two phases. Phase 1 is currently open, and Phase 2 is in development. Our aim is to find out how the Local Residents want to use Elephant Park to Relax, Socialise, and Play.
M
Elephant and Castle Key Diagram
Asi
an
10%
Wh
ite
48% 4%
Bla
30%
ck
Oth
er
From demographic research, we found that: ⁕⁕ young group aged 45 and under are the main residents. ⁕⁕ Children under 15 also account for a large proportion, accounting for nearly 20% of the total population. ⁕⁕ BAME population account for more than half of total residents.
Qualitative Research: Interview with Local Residents & Community
Shopping Centre
Street interview of local residents (random)
Latin American Community (BAME groups)
First, we randomly interviewed 12 local residents at the Elephant and Castle station. One of the aspects that was more repeated across the interviews was that the park should have a place to do sports.
Then, we interviewed 8 residents from the Latin American community. For this group, the park means community. A place where they could gather with people from their countries around food and music.
“I rarely have communication with my neighbors, because I’m busy with my work, but I really want to get to know them in my spare time” (Woman, 30 years old) “Both me and my friends say that the worst of elephant and castle is that it does not have green areas.” (Woman, 26 years old) “Most important for me is that the park stays clean” (Men, 30 years old) “The park should have an outdoor gym and bars for exercise” (Man, 30 years old)
“I go to Burgess park often. There you have a place to do barbeque in the summer. I can bring all my friends”. (Colombian Men, 30 years old) “I love to dance. Salsa classes in the park would be great” (Colombian Woman, 50 years old) “I use the park after picking up my daughter at school. What matters most to me is that she enjoys, that she can play and have a good time.” (Colombian Woman, 45 years old)
Super Arts Dance Academy (children)
Draper Together (local community)
Super Arts is a family run Performance Arts school for over 130 children. We joined one of their after-school classes and interviewed Susan Hayes, the managing director.
Draper Together is a charity promoting community cohesion by providing opportunities to the residents of the Draper Estate and their neighbours in Elephant and Castle.We spoke with Phylisia who works at Draper Together.
Susan was enthusiastic about the idea of running activities in the park, especially because of the connection to nature and the opportunity for collaboration and play are essential for children. But she also points out some challenges. For her, any space would need: ⁕⁕ Protection from the elements ⁕⁕ Speakers ⁕⁕ Special flooring ⁕⁕ Advertisement She also suggested doing a dance event, which would have a special stage design to attract visitors.
She mentioned that inclusivity was key in the elephant and castle community and that children play a key role in bringing people together. When we mentioned her about sports with plugs for music (thinking of the Latin Community) she said that it was very important to avoid infrastructure that promotes territorial behavior, she highlighted the need for events that brought people together by avoiding distinctions along cultural lines. She highlighted an important example, where instead of calling a festive event anything to do with Christmas, they called it ‘Winter Lights’ to avoid alienating other religious groups.
Workshop: Interview with Local Residents & Community
With the help of Phylisia, we run a co-creation session with 15 residents at the monthly meeting of Draper Hall residents. We collect their expectations, concerns and suggestions around the Elephant Park.
Around Security
Around Sport
⁕⁕ “Visibility. Everything seen by everybody”
⁕⁕ “Ping-Pong”
⁕⁕ “Children separate from the playing area”
⁕⁕ “Table football”
⁕⁕ “Soft floor in the children playing area, fake grass”
⁕⁕ “Sport for all generations. Multi-Sport Program”
⁕⁕ “Small square to do festivals and special events, something easy to plug in lights and music that makes easier and quicker to set up”
⁕⁕ “Outdoor Gym equipment”
⁕⁕ “Restricted hours, not a 24/7 open park”
⁕⁕ “As a sport man I don’t want to be playing with kids next to me” ⁕⁕ “Family Gym” ⁕⁕ “Basketball and football”
Around the Treehouse:
Around the Urban Beach:
⁕⁕ “it should have fun element for tree house, one unit for children, another one for young adult.”
⁕⁕ “It is important to have a border to separate the beach area, otherwise it would be messy when the kids play around.”
⁕⁕ “A open place where you can have a nap, a picnic, read a book”
⁕⁕ “It would be nice to have beach and volleyball field; anyone can join, and it could be a start to have some conversation and meet new people”
⁕⁕ “I imagine it with decoration, cushions, colors...” ⁕⁕ “Fixed items for children, like installations on the floor that make it unique… like when you loved to go to the doctor because they had games that you could only find there” ⁕⁕ “Tree house idea: circular with a café isle in the middle with organic products and solar powered”
Ideation: Makers and Breakers / Moodboard
Area
Makers
Inclusivity Considering Children Security Visibility Multi-use
Relaxing
Breakers:
Territorial Behaviour Hygiene Bad weather Logistical budget
Openness & Transparency
Special Events Elephant Theme
Playful Water Feature
`Interactivity
Prototype, Testing & Feedbacks: Making Process Feedbacks from Susan, Super Dance Academy ⁕⁕ Need a roof cover because weather is not reliable. Although space should be roof covered but should have the view.
Final Prototype
⁕⁕ Need an area where people can lay down and look at the sky. ⁕⁕ Parents want the kid’s safety - somewhere they can observe the kids and see the kids play with freedom. ⁕⁕ The size of stage should be considered, deeper and higher. Feedbacks From Phylisia from Draper Together ⁕⁕ Tree house could be new landmark for E&C. ⁕⁕ Security is really important for kids and parents. ⁕⁕ The structures being built shouldn’t be seasonal (in this case the fountain is better than the flat water pool). ⁕⁕ The coffee house should not be inside the treehouse. ⁕⁕ A flat grass area called “Elephant square” which is a multi-purpose place for fitness classes regularly and local business (like markets). Testing with Family and Kid at Park ⁕⁕ “... you just need to have water and sand, just that”. (Mother of 2 kids, 31 years old) ⁕⁕ “...in CORAMS an adult can only enter to the playground if it is accompanied by a kid” (Mother of 3 kids, 40 years old) ⁕⁕ “I you see, here in the garden I can see all what is happening because it is a close area, so it is easier and I feel my kids are safe”. (Mother, 35 years old) ⁕⁕ “I like games that children can play independently… so they are not calling me, mom push me”. (Mother of 3 kids, 40 years old) ⁕⁕ “I remember a water game where you had to push a button with your hand and then it throwed water, like a fountain, and now I think about it, it was good because you also saved water”. (Mother of 2 kids, 33 years old)
Further Development: Online Booking Platform In order to make the most usage of the Elephant Park, I created this mobile online platform for the local residents. Bookable online schedule allows the local residents or organisations to block off the specific period of time to have their own activities or special events. This will allow residents to build a schedule that suits them, increasing their involvement and creating a sense of ownership that will help the community come together.