12 October 2009
08.00
I've got the wake up call from the hotel service. Hardly open my eyes but I know the battle will begin today, I must well prepared. So excited!!
09.00
Me and My roomates had a luxurious breakfast at Meissen, buffet restaurant at Prima Hotel.
09.30
The hotel bus took all the participant to the workshop venue. I brought all my equipment prepared for overnight working at the workshop. It was 16 degree celcius outside, I was freezing.
10.00
We arrived at the olimpic stadium where the Seoul Design Olimpiad 2009 was held. I saw 3 big baloon domes, one of it will be our venue.
Julia Kassim, the Helen Hamlyn Centre Director http://www.hhc.rca.ac.uk/ , opened the briefing for the challenge at one of the dome. This dome is the nicest one, and will be our presenation stage. As she explained her ideas about Inclusive design, the application in our lifes, and how to achieve it, I already knew that this challenge will be very tough. She kept telling us to think as simple as possible, because even if the problem might looks very complex, but the design solutions could be very simple. What I was affraid of is that we would think too complicated and couldn't create the design solutions in 48 hours, as it is the challenge itself.
At the end of the brief, she finally mention the theme of the challenge for this year. It was about leisure, pleasure and social interaction. So whatever solution we come up with, it should be socially inclusive and shows that we care about the needs and aspirations of disabled or older people. Each team will have one disabled or elderly. And the design solution must be gained from their life experiences and yet applicable for wider society and realistic.
After the brief, Julia asked us to work on groups and create a machine simulation using only sounds and actions. Other groups must be able to guess what machine are we simulated. We came up with the "phone" then we discussed about the individual task for the performance. We only had 20 minutes to discuss and prepare for the performance. And compare to other team, I guess we were doing an excellent works, so proud of my team :)
11.30
We were led to to our workshop. Each team has our own room contains of 4 big tables, working chairs and sofa set. We re-organize the room to what we like and suits our activity best. It was really important to do that considered we were nesting for for the next 48 hours during the challenge. I kept imagined that it would be a hard time. The Korean designer not so good in English. But it was good that each team had an interpreter.
We started the discussion. Followed by an interview with our design user. She's 81 years old lady. As we all took our lunch and seated on the sofa, Jim, our designer mentor took it as a very simple interview with the old lady. She's basically just came accidentaly to the challenge as a volunteer. Her bestfriend whose the designer partner/extreme user for other team is the one who asked her to come. With some sweet talk about nice food and some money, she trust her bestfriend and came as a volunteer. We spent 5 hours talked with her but still found nothing major as an issue. While we were suppose to go out with her and explore her way of life. But we were kinda frustrated because apparently she really didn't keen to go anywhere. She said she just want to spend the whole day talking with us, the young people. She loved it! She enjoyed talking with us. She didn't want to go anywhere. She said, she has done anything, been anywhere and now just want to sit down and have a relax time talking with us. She told us a lot of things about her past life. She was once awarded as the best badminton athlete and also the best hardworking woman by the government and she really proud of that. She moved from the Notrh Korea just after the war time, and she once ran an orchard garden in her village. Now she lives with her son. She likes climbing mountain, go up and back, seeing people and give them smile. She also likes to go to church and meeting her friends. She and her friends often gatherings in each of their house, serves the friends with fruits and drinks. She likes to socialize with people. But when we asked her, if there's a place she would like to with us that day, where would it be? And she kept saying that she dont want to go anywhere. We were so frustrated!!
One of our team member, Lee (Korean Designer) said that she once had this research with her lecturer about the habits of elderly in Korea. Apparenlty during this stage of her life, they really dont have motivation to go out and socialize with people anymore. They like to socialize but they just dont want to give it some effort to even go outside their house and seeing other people. The will feel very slow, very inconfident, afraid of being someone else's burden and the most ironic thing is they said they just want to stay in their house and wait for their death. And other Korean designers agrred about it. There it is!! We finally found something interesting about her life. and that will be our issue that we will try to develop. It's about : HOW TO MOTIVATE PEOPLE TO GO OUT AND INTERACT WITH OTHER PEOPLE?
We start it by discovered about human stages of life, started from child, teenage, adult and elderly. Each stages we found the most common things that will be related to our major issue. Means that our issue will be applicable to other generations too. Then we explored all the points that we shared and we discuss about it. Until we came out with the summary. I't was quite clear about what we have to create actually.
We continue the whole night with so
me problem solving points. Each of us have to come out with some problem-solving and share with among us. There were a lot of briliant ideas from 8 different designers. It was amazing to found out how people ways of thinking. I discover something about designing for people. It's about understanding what people needs, and not just about noce or not, good or bad. And not just understand, but also include them on the process of designing. Now I understand what Julia means on the brief presentation. Tonight we decided to go back to our places at 12 and come back early in the morning tomorrow and continue with our discussion.
It was so cold outside that night and I have to take cab all by myself to my hotel. I'm abit worried, because not so many taxi drivers can speak English, in facts not so many people in Korea can speaks English. It's too bad because Korea is really an amazing tourist place to go to. And they should be more prepared for the tourists.
