Next Innovation Playground: Tsen Yao Chang 張岑瑤 at TEDxYunTechU

Good morning everyone, nice to see you here. I think it's quite early morning for everyone to wake up at such a time for a serious speech. So for this morning, because I'm the first section to talk about the design issue, I would like to give you some ideas about what I'm going to do. First, you see my topics here is about 'Next Innovation Playground: Design with Cultural Engagement.' Those are the topics I'm going to address. And I think you can imagine there we have three main factors of concern: one is about innovation, another is about design, and also about cultural engagement. What do you mean by cultural engagement? I think when we talk about culture, it's quite a complex issue. And I think about how to deliver this idea to you all this morning because it's quite early, everyone just woke up, and think about we should have a relaxed day for opening, but now we talk about culture. Culture is quite complex, everybody knows, but everyone says, 'I don't know what my culture is.' Maybe you will say, 'I don't really understand totally,' because every time you understand your culture when you start to get involved in a different culture, you just sense you are different from others. So a lot of why you concern about culture is quite important. Also, you have your own culture that's quite unique and independent for yourself. That's why I think about this morning we start to talk about culture. I would like to think about how can I deliver this idea to you all and think about culture could be that kind of inspiring pool for everyone to think about that, to have a lot of good ideas can come from your own culture, right? So like I say, when we started contact with other culture, then you start to understand you are quite different. Not the first time I really sense I'm quite different from others, it's when I started studying just in the UK. I got my Master's Degree in Taiwan and then I started my PhD degree just in the UK, that's for four years for doctoral research. And the first two years I studied at Sheffield University, a lot in central England, not a place you can imagine. I start to contact with English people, start to immerse in English culture, and with different kinds of interesting issues involved with culture. But what do we think about culture? You know, when I start my research there and I traveled for a long journey and then arrived in the UK, I imagined maybe the UK is like a quite public city like in Taipei or New York, it's very busy city. But the first airport I start is Heathrow, and then I fly to Manchester, that's a different airport. And when I arrive at the airport and go to Sheffield, I pass through a national park just in central England. That's a place you can imagine not city, it's like a rural place in the countryside. So then I start to imagine, where I come, why I come here, and what this place will deliver me different content about research. So that's the place I think about, right? Okay, it's a country that's different from my own, and what I would do here and what I can start my studying, and even you know my living state, my life here, because it's for at least three to four years, that's a long time. So two years in Sheffield I worked in England, and another two years because my supervisor just transferred his job to Scotland. He got a job promotion, became a head of school at Robert Gordon University. That's the reason I delved into there and let start my another studying journey. So in Scotland, it's quite different from England. When I work in my research office, you can even the essence you can find is different. Also, people think England and Scotland, even they are in the same Britain, but they are different countries in the same island. So I think why, you know that for me is quite the first time I remember I start to understand they think there are different people just in the same island. And even you talk about their language, you go to a street, you contact with different people just walking around, go shopping, talking with people on a counter, you find the accent is different, even the way they use the language is different. And I think about, right, so I need to get used to another living here. So for this first two years I'm in England and another year in Scotland, so that gave me a lot of opportunity to contact with different cultural issues. For me, it's really quite inspiring, also for me to think about what I am, what I own, and what's my culture. So I think before this four years, what I really think is quite important for doing PhD research, because I think most people know once you finish your PhD research, you will become an independent researcher. That means you need to have sufficient ability to do independent research, and you need to be the person who could figure out what's the problem, what kind of tool, what kind of logic can deal with this question, and finally you have a resolution for it. So this process is kind of training for you to think critically. And in different culture, the first thing you need to learn, I think especially when you see that I show this image, that's a seminar for sharing different perspective with my colleagues. I think that's the most important lesson for me is to think about what argument means, because we come from different cultural backgrounds. To have arguments, normally in our culture we will play some authority, and also we will be like, for example, maybe teacher says something quite important, you must think that's very important. But actually, maybe they have a different answer. Especially I would say when doing research, you understand there is no perfect research. Even if there is 50% answer to say yes, this answer is right, there must be another 50% saying no, that's wrong. So for this case, I think argument is very important. Once you have a question or maybe you get some idea, you question it: what do you really think about? What really inspires you to think something else? I think that's very important. So when I was in this place, I think argument is very important. But how can you have argument, especially when we want to deliver a good design? We need to have a statement. Statement is very important. But what does this statement mean? I think first you need to have a question. You need to learn how to discover a question, define a question, and then you will develop a method and technique, finally you will have a resolution, right? So here, when I come back to Taiwan, I become a teacher in a university. I need to deliver knowledge, and the knowledge especially for research status, you always think about you want to think about the originality of knowledge. That's very important. So I start to think about everything you need to look at the facts. Facts are very important but difficult to cover because in our world there's a lot of messages and complexity, you couldn't tell what's really true. Once you look at the news on TV, sometimes you are really confused what the news tells you. So I think in this complex world, if you look at good signs for the design, they have two things quite important: one is creative activity. What do you mean by creative activity? Maybe you start to think about, you know, like even when you are a kid, you start to play some game. Game could be some activities, or maybe now you are working in this room and maybe you have some activity afterwards to join this design context. And also they have some interesting world happening in the school or even in society, that could be happening around the world. Another thing I think also quite important is life aesthetics. How did you deliver your own aesthetics? I think for everyone you are unique, and how did you look at the world? You have your own perspectives. But the thing is, how did you deliver your sense or your taste? I think it's difficult. We always say knowledge you can deliver, but taste sense you can't. So for your life, I think experience is very important. You need to always think about what it really is. For example, I just said sometimes using culture is always you familiar with, sometimes you feel strange because once you are always in there, you only see it then it becomes transparent. But if you stand out of it, when you study overseas, they look at your own country, then you start to see that's different. That's why we talk about you can see a lot of issues talk about creative industry. Let's try to think about industry is not about heavy labor, it's not about the dance works, they could be more creative. So I think about experience design, it needs to have four elements: first, the emotion; second, the intuition arts, because people say things very directly, that's just intuitively they have feeling about it; and another is about design, you have design process to make the thing finished, complete to your customer; and the usability. I think that's my baseline for doing design product. Your product must be useful, that's basic. But some people say maybe they just need something, especially when people talk about cultural product. But here I would like to define it differently because you know if you want this product just always be looked at in a substantial way, I think usefulness and usability is quite important, that's the baseline. So how did you find and understand those creative industry and activity and life aesthetics? I think you need to have a kind of discovering tool, and also you need to have that kind of mindset and a way where you can deliver this kind of mindset. I would like to say one way you can find it out could be if you heard about ethnography. The concept of ethnography is quite interesting because in the past time, it's just about research in a culture, in a society for a long time to some phase and phenomena, and finally they can build up their theory. So that's a place that has more challenge, but also it's like a place you need to immerse yourself and to get what you can learn from it. So in the beginning, I think everybody, like even me when I go to the university, it's like a freshman. Everything for you is interesting, it's fresh, and it inspires you to want to learn. So I think ethnography gives you a context, you know, you just like a freshman in university, you start to open your own eyes, look at the world, and that's the same when you look at different culture. So for ethnography, they have some two kinds here, I only show several, but of course you can deliver different because like another branch just in another turn is like cultural probes. It's quite similar to ethnography context because they have the same body to talk about how to look at a culture. So here like participant observation, in-depth interview, and so on, that's something you can use for ethnography. If you are interested in this, maybe you can Google it to look forward. So I have a comment about ethnography. What does ethnography mean? It's just like a world of describing a culture, and the goal of ethnography research is to understand another way of life from the native point of view. I think that's the way to define what it means. I think if you are a designer, that's quite important for you to have that kind of point of perspective. That's the way I think it's quite helpful for you to think about how did you understand the culture. In the beginning, I use a picture to show it to me because it doesn't mean you need to have observation first and understanding, because sometimes you need to raise a question and then you start to observe what's happening around, and then you understand. So it just depends on how did you define your question, and then you will use this picture. But I think that's quite important ability to establish to find out how to have that kind of ethnography ability. So I would like to give you some example that I start some project with my student, and I want to give them some challenge. Just like even you are a designer, but you need to have a kind of researcher's mindset. You need to define a question, find out what's the real question and what could be helpful for people. So they need to deliver not just the product. I think the challenge and the idea they have is need to be postponed, you know, they need to think about further for their own experience. So I use this diagram to just reflect why I say they have four sections to do the cooperation with the project when people want to do the project that was design involved with culture. So first is discover, define, develop, deliver. And then I give you one example that my student just did this year. They got the Yex Golden Awards and also got Red Dot Awards. So when we start from this question, I think that's quite interesting example because for student, if they want to know temple, I think temple you would think about worship, and worship is something for student maybe they just follow their parents and they are not really know the meaning. So when we start to go for this issue, I think in the beginning I encourage my student, you need to go to the place to see what the problem is. I want them to report what they find in this place. When we look at the Longshan Temple, I find my student went there and then they try to discover what really needs a designer to improve the situation, what is important. So they go there to observe what happened there and make notes, even they will take some video. So when they go there, the first group of students went there, they found out that's interesting: people get in but they not really understand which way is good direction to do the worship to God, and how to visit the temple, and what's the meaning about those decorations in the temple. And also when they finished their visiting, they went out, they want to bring something back, they find some amulets like this picture you see. I think this one, the Longshan Temple amulet, the one now just selling in the Longshan Temple, you can see it's quite similar to Japanese style amulet. The traditional way like this way is quite different, that's in style very traditional one. But now you will see most popular amulet selling in the Longshan Temple is in this style. So you know, people since they are not really care what the main culture is, even they just buy something they like, that's quite intuitional. Therefore, my student, I want them to find what the gap for designer to improve. And so I want them to think about even temple is a place for worship, but Longshan Temple is a place for people to be like a museum style, and they can think this case could be delivered as a kind of service system for designer to get into to improve and produce some good product for people to have. And it's not just about making something about a temple worship, but also hold the good fortune there, also meaning this important memory when they are there, especially for the international tourists. So we think about because in the beginning, student when they told me the most souvenir selling there only cost very cheap, 100, 200, that 200 is very expensive. I told them if you put the design in and you put the time, you put the creative in, but you only cost 200, that's less. You must challenge higher and you need to deliver something different. So finally we want to make a price something like a 600 product for people to encourage people to buy. So I think that's a challenge for them because that's quite different from people's normal product there. So we went there because first we find out people don't understand how to worship. So they start to deliver a 'how to' guide, they have some guideline for tourists to understand how to do the worship and also what meaning for those gods, how, what if they got some problem or difficulty, which god can give some fortune, get some blessing and protection if you want to respect. And we also told the whole history about the temple and all the story about those gods. So especially for tourists, that's really inspiring because it's not just about having that, it's about memory, it's about learning. I think that's an important thing for having experience there. So they also have some image about the decorations in the temple, and we make it like postcard, but all the postcard is like a tourist guide told them what the meaning about those things. And also they have some history, we introduce not just Longshan Temple but also the whole area just nearby, so people can go there have one day traveling. So that's I think that's another way to improve the local tourism. So also we change the amulet style but also keep the traditional flat taste, and so you can see that's the amulet here, and that they can change the color by temperature. So later if you are interested, I can show you the video. And here I would like to have a comment about you know, people buy things, we know you need to pay, but the most important in this moment I think people not just want to buy souvenirs, they want to buy experience. That's why you can see more designers create more interesting and attractive world. Because even you know, you can have milk just milk by the phone, by the fresh cow, but you can have very fresh milk with beautiful package, with beautiful design, just sell in the good shop. So that gives you different meaning, different quality, different sense. So when we start to think about this idea, I think that's quite important for people to think about how did you can find a different and unique element for design. I think your culture can give you some insights. So for this session, I would like to stop here and hope later we have another session to talk about this idea. Thank you for your attention.