Silver A' Design Award in Meta, Strategic and Service Design Goes to Rixing Go Digital Self Guided Service by Ting-Han Chen

Ting-Han Chen recognized for meta, strategic and service design by the international grand jury of the 2022 - 2023 A' Design Award & Competition

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

COMO, Italy, April 20, 2023 /DesignNewswire/ A' Design Award & Competition has confirmed the Silver A' Design Award in the Meta, Strategic and Service Design category for Rixing Go Digital Self Guided Service by Ting-Han Chen, designed for Play Design Lab. The result belongs to the 2022 - 2023 A' Design Award & Competition and was determined through blind peer review by an international grand jury panel of established academics, design professionals and press members, who scored anonymized entries against predetermined criteria.

What the Silver A' Design Award Means

The Silver A' Design Award celebrates top-tier designs that embody excellence and innovation. This award acknowledges creations that are not only aesthetically pleasing but also highly functional, reflecting the designer's deep understanding and skill. Silver A' Design Award recipients are recognized for their contribution to raising industry standards and advancing the practice of design. Their work often incorporates original innovations and elicits a strong emotional response, making a notable impact on the improvement of everyday life.

About Rixing Go Digital Self Guided Service

Rixing is the world's last and only type foundry that's still making traditional Chinese letterpress. As part of Taiwan's cultural heritage and an ambitious career rather than a for-profit business, Rixing dedicates itself to conveying cultural values of craftsmanship and aesthetics of letterpress to all. This project aims at helping Rixing deliver its value proposition by implementing a self-guided service for visitors to learn about the history, artefacts, techniques, and commodities of letterpress on their own, leaving staff more time to better serve their customers.

About Ting-Han Chen

Ting-Han (Daniel) Chen is an entrepreneur and designer specializing in experience design, service design, and branding. With nearly 20 years of industry experience, he has founded several design-centric companies and achieved remarkable success. Ting-Han's professional design works have garnered more than 60 international awards, including iF, Muse, Core77, Communication Arts, Australian Good Design Awards, A' Design Awards, and London Design Awards, among others. Notably, his ventures have received esteemed recognition, such as Play Design Hotel, which has been honored with Fast Company's Innovation By Design Awards, the Radical Innovation Award, and the iF Service Design Award.

Award Record

This recognition makes Ting-Han Chen a winner of 2 A' Design Awards. The awards were granted between the 2021 - 2022 and the 2022 - 2023 editions of the A' Design Award & Competition.

About the A' Meta, Strategic and Service Design Award

The A' Service Design Award is an international design competition recognizing excellence in service designs by consultancy companies and brands worldwide. It is organized within the A' Design Award & Competition and is open to service designers, strategic design consultants, business designers and UX/UI designers from all countries. Typical entries include design strategy, design management, service design, franchising design, strategic design and service blueprints. The awarded service designs are published at https://dezigners.org/design-category/service

About A' Design Award & Competition

Organized annually since 2008, A' Design Award & Competition is an international, juried design accolade. The competition is open to entries from all countries. The philanthropic mission of the A' Design Award is to advance society through good design, by recognizing and promoting superior products, projects and services that benefit society, and by creating a global awareness and appreciation for good design practices and principles. Nominations are peer reviewed and evaluated anonymously by an international grand jury panel of established academics, design professionals and press members against predetermined criteria such as functionality, ergonomics, engineering, presentation, innovation, usability, sustainability and technology, with score normalization applied to remove biases. Awards are conferred at Platinum, Gold, Silver, Bronze and Iron levels. Eligible laureates receive the A' Design Prize, which includes the award trophy, the certificate of design excellence, the hardcover yearbook, a lifetime license to use the A' Design Award winner logo, exhibition of awarded works, an invitation to the gala night and award ceremony in Italy, inclusion in the World Design Rankings and Designer Rankings, and public relations and publicity services. Registration, uploading a work and receiving a preliminary score are free of charge, and Professional and Digital Edition laureates are not contractually obliged to pay further fees to claim the A' Design Prize. More information is available at https://competition.adesignaward.com

Press Resources

Winner Page: https://dezigners.org/145555
A' Design Award Page: https://competition.adesignaward.com/145555
Media Showcase: https://www.designnewsroom.com/!145555
Laureate Profile: https://dezigners.org/d/317983

Media Contact

Giulia Ferrari, Press Office
Designers.Org
Via Leone Leoni 32, 22100 Como, Italy
press@designers.org
+39 031 4491953

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Fact Sheet

The Work

Project: Rixing Go Digital Self Guided Service
Function: Self Guided Service
Category: Meta, Strategic and Service Design
Discipline: Service Design
Industry: Business and Design Industry
Colors: Light Slate Gray, Dark Gray, Dark Slate Gray, Silver and Gainsboro
Images: 5
Client: Play Design Lab

The Recognition

Laureate: Ting-Han Chen
Country: Taiwan (China)
Recognition: Silver A' Design Award
Edition: 2022 - 2023
Design ID: #145555

Credits

Image Credits: Photographer CrisKa Photography, The Digital Guide Designed for Rixing Type Foundry, 2023.; Creator Ting-Han Chen, The Map of Points of Interest in Rixing Type Foundry, 2022.; Photographer China Productivity Center, The Video of the Guided Tour shown on a user's screen, 2022.; Creator Ting-Han Chen, The UI designs of the Self-Serviced Mobile Guide, 2023.

Design Details

Unique Properties: This project introduces a visitor-centered self-guided service framework, which includes points of interest, and a correspondent web-based mobile guide. The mobile guide connects artifacts, knowledge, and extended services in Rixing Type Foundry. Visitors can stop by a numbered signage, click on the correspondent number on the mobile to learn about the artifacts or shop souvenirs on their own, leaving staff more time to better serve customers. People can enjoy the guide in sequence or move to different POI to compose their own journey of visit.
Inspiration: Rixing is well known as the world’s last and only type foundry still making Traditional Chinese letterpress. To convey the cultural values of such disappearing industry heritage - letterpressing, Rixing devotes to offering guided tours to every visitor. However, the guide quality varied from staff to staff, making the visitor experience inconsistent. Also, it takes an average of 27 minutes for a comprehensive guide for each visitor, which is time-consuming, labor-intense, and gradually becomes a financial burden for Rixing. To resolve the crisis, we’ve introduced a self-guided service to free human labor and enhance visitor experience.
Research: The project is about transforming Rixing into a visitor-centric experiential destination. Value propositioning, stakeholder interviews, and design workshops were conducted, and customer experience journey mapping is used to summarize an optimal and comprehensive guided tour experience from the visitor's perspective. Based on the research insights gained, points of interests are identified and made inter-connected to be experienced systematically, whilst providing the visitors with options to experience different points of interests freely.
Challenge: Rixing is less of a for-profit business, but more of a social enterprise devoted to preserving the disappearing type-making culture. Therefore, financial condition was hard for Rixing before we had worked with Rixing to optimize their visitor service experience. Design-wise, the challenge lies in the design of UX/UI workflow and the attention paid to the details. Each web page UI needs carefully arranged and hint at the user on actions to take next, and keep the user experience consistent.
Realization and Technology: The self-guide system is realized as a mobile web compatible with most smartphones (e.g. iOS or Android). Since it's web-based, no app installation is needed. Just scan the QR code, the mobile guide service will start immediately. When experiencing, the user interface keeps the visitor's own system display preference setting to fit individual style, and visitors can review again all the guided tour contents after leaving the Foundry. We developed the mobile guide using Squarespace, a coding-free responsive web design platform. The audio and video contents are stored in the Vimeo cloud platform, and can be updated with ease.
Operation and Interaction: 1. The visitors scan the QR Code shown on the front gate of Rixing Type Foundry to activate the self-guided service. 2. The mobile guide opens in visitors’ web browser, and the user follows the hint on the interface to watch the instruction video on how-to use the self-guided service. 3. Visitors arrive at a numbered point of interests (POI), and then click on the correspondent number on their mobile guide to watch and listen to the guided tour of that POI. 4. Visitors can experience sequentially or jump to different POI at their own will, review the POI after going home, and/or link to extensive information/website for online shopping or further explorations.
Project Duration and Location: The project started on Sep 2022 in Rixing Type Foundry in Taipei, Taiwan.
Specifications: 1. A mobile web design compatible with most personal handheld devices, size of variables. 2. A set of user interfaces to be displayed on 1080 x 1920px portrait screen. 3. The board with a QR Code to activate the self-guided service in portrait A4. 4. The numbered signage of POI in oval x 8 pcs (number extendable), 200 mm x 120 mm x 5 mm for each. 5. The overall map of POI in landscape, 297 mm x 420 mm x 5 mm. 6. Cloud storage, Squarespace. 7. Video and Audio storage, Vimeo.
Keywords: self-service, self-guided, service design, mobile guide, digital guide, museum guide, webapp, type foundry, letterpress