Product Design . Typography Research . Visual Communication
”The only important thing about design is how it relates to people. ”
To me, design is a tool that offers warmth and laughter to a world that is oftentimes cold.
I like to interact with people. I observe the world with a curiosity that drives me to understand where people find their personal joys. By chatting with the elderly, I learn about their treasured memories and experiences with traditional life; by interacting with young children, I absorb a new perspective in awe of our world. Strangers can offer the purest forms of happiness. These interactions and understandings of joy are my most precious design assets. Beyond interaction-driven inspiration, my home country has always offered me a great deal of inspiration. Taiwan has contained multitudes of cultures united by common values of kindness and diversity. I always try to share these values with the rest of the world through my design.
I’m also a passionate photographer, singer, and lover of Taiwanese Danzai noodles.
Hello, my name is Clarence.
Profile
An innovative creator balancing rigorous academics and an industrial design major with a passion for photography and a drive to push the boundaries of human-centered design. Currently focused on prototyping a new typeface to improve reading legibility for the elderly. Driven by the desire to make a cold world a little warmer.
EDUCATION
2017.09-present
National Cheng Kung University
Department of Industrial Design (NCKU ID) Bachelor of Design (B.Des) Overall 3.53 GPA
2014.09-2017.06
The Affiliated Senior High School of National Chung Hsing University
AWARDS
2020.06
Gold Award
NCKU ID Summer Exhibition 2020
2020.01
Bronze Award
NCKU ID Winter Exhibition 2019
2019.11
Honorable Mention Ist Tainan Design Awards 2019
SCHOLARSHIP
2020.07-present
Ministry of Science and Technology Taiwan 2021 College Student Research Scholarship
2020.06-present Ministry of Education Taiwan 2021 Scholarship Program for Overseas Study in Arts & Design Product Design Group Workshop
LANGUAGES
Mandarin
English IELTS Overall Band Score of 6.5
German Goethe-Zertifikat A1
SKILLS
Multimedia Visual Communication
Typography Research
Industrial Design
Brand Identity
Kansei Experience Design
Website Development
SOFTWARES
Adobe Illustrator
Adobe Photoshop
Adobe Premiere
Adobe After Effects
Solidworks Keyshot
EXPERIENCE
2021.07
HCII 2021 : International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction Paper Title: “Elderly-Centered Design: A New Numeric Typeface for Increased Legibility”
2020.06- present Awfully Good Group, London Creative Lead
2019.09-2020.06
NCKU Student Council of Industrial Design President of Media Communication Department
Rm. 3, 13F., No.36, Sec. 3, Liuchuan W. Rd. Central Dist., Taichung City 400215 Taiwan
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Elderly-Centered Design Furniture Design Culture and Creative
01 Elderly-Centered Design
A special radio for the elderly
Pio is a radio specially designed for the elderly. It has an excellent operating experience, perfectly meets the daily habits of the elderly, and has a unique interface design and font design. Pio is both porcelain and practical, and it is the best companion for the elderly.
”Make listening more friendly
listening to the radio friendly for the elderly”
Background
The broadcast media continues to play an inportant role in people's lives
With the development of communication technology, the boundaries between various communication media are increasingly blurred. The audiovisual public can access content from a variety of media on a variety of carriers. However, even with the growing diversity of choices available to the audiovisual public, the broadcast media continues to play an irreplaceable role in people's lives due to its ease of access, low cost of carriers, and companionship.
98
89
83
According to Nielsen's Q3 2018 audience report, with emerging technologies and ease of connectivity, voice radio reached 244 million people (98%) in the U.S. each month, the highest number of people reached by radio compared to any other platform.
Today RAJAR announced 48.8 million adults or 89% of the adult (15+) UK population turn to their selected radio stations each week in the second quarter of 2019. The total average number of weekly hours listened to radio for this Quarter is 1.1015 Billion.
According to the 2018 Taiwan Media White Paper, statistics on major media users show that the age distribution of radio listeners is dominated by middle-aged and elderly people over 30 years old, accounting for 83.2%.
Problem
Many elders use radios, but none of radios are specially designed for them
According to Nielsen's The total audience report: Q3 2018, the market for voice broadcasting continues to expand as emerging technologies and ease of connectivity evolve. Radios are the primary vehicle used to listen to voice radio, reaching 92% of U.S. adults each week. Many people listen to the radio, most of them are over 50 years old, and most of them listen to the radio mainly through AM/FM radio.
Listeners listen mainly for the reasons of "companionship" and "gaining new knowledge". My grandmother is also one of the radio lovers who like to use the AM/FM radio. She considers it to be a kind of "companionship" that she relies on for spiritual support. However, after observing my grandmother's use of the radio, I found that many problems made it diffcult for her to use it. Therefore, I would like to give my grandmother the perfect radio listening experience through what I learned.
User Journey Map
Finding out some touchpoints
First, I listed my grandmother's daily use of the radio through a user journey map to clarify the inconveniences. I found that the main problems were that the display was too small, the buttons were too small to operate. Every time my grandmother changed the batteries, she forgot the battery type and the positive and negative terminals' direction.
Competitive Product Analysis
Understanding the positioning of the product
Then, through competing product analysis, I understood the basic features of the radio products and my design positioning. More importantly, through intuitive research and blind test, I understood more about the users' needs.
Feactures Blind Test
If the weight of radio is too light, users will feel insecure
Prize Zone & Brands Analysis
The size of the radio should be suitable for onehand operation.
TARGET MARKET
The text on the radio are not easy to identify and the buttons are too small to press.
Intuition Research
Usually, older adults don't hang headphones to listen to the radio.
Older adults listen to a few channels on a fixed basis, so they don't change them.
Older adults use the radio when they go out for a walk, and they listen to the radio at night before they feel asleep.
Research
Reframing our challenge based on needs
After understanding the basic needs of users, I wanted my design to be more in line with the human factors of the elderly, so I did some research related to the elderly, including understanding the vision, hearing and taking action .
VISION
As people age, their information processing speed and effciency in reading declines. Research has revealed that the elderly show a defcit when reading text composed of very small or very large characters. When reading these texts, their reading speeds drop to about 70% of a young adult’s. Moreover, five visual dimensions declined with increasing age: visual processing speed, light sensitivity, dynamic vision, near vision, and visual search. The elder vision would also become narrower, yellower, and unclear, especially for those with cataracts.
HEARING
Studies have found that a little noise can affect how much the elderly can remember. We sometimes fnd that when a third party intervenes in a conversation between an older adult and another person, the older adult often appears irritated or overwhelmed because the interruption makes them unable to process the information in the conversation and is instantly disconnected. Besides, the ideal voice for teaching the elderly is that of a middleaged male because their audio is the most acceptable to the elderly and can be processed.
TAKING ACTION
As people age, human muscle control will also become worse. Such hand-eye coordination is becoming increasingly uncoordinated. The actual very essential operation has also deteriorated. Muscle strength, endurance, strength, and speed are also becoming less and less than before. Therefore, when designing products for the elderly, the following points should be taken into account: ensure that the target is precisely selectable, keep the gestures simple, and give the user enough time to complete the operation.
Design Process
After the previous analysis and research, I started to design the product. Based on these researches, I understood the usage needs of the elderly and then tried to beautify the product through design to make it both practical and aesthetic. I proceeded with prototyping, sketching, making the internal circuit with Arduino, did a simple CMF design, and finally made the model.
Prototype
In this step, I tested several different prototypes for the elderly to understand the product's scale and the way the interface is arranged. I also conducted brief interviews during the testing process to understand more about the needs. Through the stereotype research, I also learned that the elderly like specific channels and therefore need the channel shortcuts.
Ideation
This stage was the most interesting, and I designed it based on the previous steps and drew a beautiful shape. In addition to the function and form that could perfectly meet the user's needs, I also wanted my design to bring warmth to people, so I chose the warm orange element, which could meet the visual needs of senior citizens and could bring warmth to people.
We use Arduino for the internal mechanism. We used Arduino UNO for the initial test, connected Radio Shield, speaker, variable resistor and other modules, and then input the code into Arduino NANO after the successful test, in order to reduce the size.
Arduino
Model Making
The fnal stage is often the most careful. We used Solidworks to do CADing and then printed it out in 3D. Considering the product's CMF, we used matte paint and used soft silicone to design the bracelet. We carefully assembled each part and put the mechanism in to make it a working model.
Final Layout
old eras root , new eras route
Pio has a stunning turntable design, which only takes one finger to adjust the channel, and provides a more intuitive and interesting method to operate.
The Smart Audio Base provides a great listening experience and elegant protection. It attaches magnetically when charging which prevents the elderly form complicated charging procedure.
Pio features first font designed for the elderly, Pioneer Concepts, which is different from ordinary fonts habitually enlarging in order to improve readability. In addition to readability, Pioneer Concepts aim at legibility and visibility .
02 Furniture Design
A magical cushion for children
Have you ever imagined that? One day furniture can be turned into an amusement facility so that you and your children can make the living room a playground and create your own imaginary space. It's a magical cushion. It's so interesting that most furniture can't keep up. It meets all your needs. Children can enjoy doodle, climbing, and playfulness with it. It's muro.
”Turn a playground
the living room into playground for children”
Background
Because of work, parents spend limited time on children, and the quality is also poor
With the increasing proportion of two-income families in Taiwan, the time that parents can spend with their children is becoming more and more limited, so how to spend time with their children in an efficient and "high quality" manner has become a major concern for parents. Due to the busy work schedule, parents do not have much time to spend with their children, and most parents think that they should spend time with their children when they are on vacation.
According to the survey, as many as 80% of parents believe that they should spend more time with their children and that the quality of that time could be better. Among them, as many as 57.9% of parents think the quality can be better, 20.2% think the quality needs to be enhanced, and 0.4% think the quality needs to be worked on. Nearly half of the parents still need to handle business or other
Problems
Building a playground at home is necessary
We found that not only is the time and quality of time spent with children decreasing, but also the living space in small families is getting smaller and smaller, limiting children's learning and activity space and even affecting their development.More and more parents are too busy to take their children out to play regularly. The need to turn the home into a playground has increased dramatically as many parents are reluctant to take their children outside due to the new coronavirus epidemic.
Design Goal
We started to think about how to create a playground for the children in the limited space of the home. We found that the living room was the most usable place, so we started to think about how to turn the living room into a playground for the children.
Design Process
I think this design is very interesting. We first participated in several workshops and used methods like crazy 8 and design sprints to stimulate ideas like mine. Then we tested and enriched our design through field interviews and prototyping with children. It was fun to think about the play format, and there were unexpected rewards. Finally, we used the moodboard to think about the appearance and style of our products, and we also conducted brand design and AR simulation.
In order to better understand the problems and the inconvenience encountered by novice parents in their lives, we conducted interviews. For observing the interaction between interviewees in actual field, we set the interview location in the living room.Despite the fact that we only interviewed three families because of the COVID-19, we still benefited a lot. Not only did we get many answers to our questions, but we also received a good deal of unexpected feedback. What they responded in common was that they thought it would be a good idea to combine the playground with the furniture.
We made a prototype with cartons and showed it to children. Our thought was to let the children join our team, make our design more in line with their expectations, and together create the space and games to children’s taste. We thought this process was very interesting and vital. We had lots of fun with the children, and also stirred up various ideas.
Ideation
In this stage, we revolved around the idea of combining furniture with an inclusive playground, including shape, mechanism, and size. Furthermore, we discussed the functionality about interaction between our actual product and the field, and considered the merits of the product, good cleanliness and good storage. Additionally, we made mood board style setting and CMF design. We finally decided to choose a clean, scratch-resistant structural material.
Moodboard
LOGO Design
Modeling
We made a 1:3 scaled-down model and created the scenario of playground. We conducted some material testing and tried to achieve not only the feelings but also the structural strength
More varieties, more realstic
In order to make the model more realistic, we used various materials We made our base through carpentry, consulted the traditional sofa expert about cushion production techniques ,and developed framework with 3D printed models.
Final Layout
Furniture x Inclusive Playground
”Some people think design means how it looks. But of course, if you dig deeper, it’s really how it works.”
Next, I will continue to care for the world with a sincere heart. I want to explore the human mind more deeply and understand the users more thoroughly. I will continue to research design and extend my horizons in font design and visual communication. I hope to make the design more suitable for users. I will continue to use my smile and design to bring warmth and laughter to the world!
