Interviews with Ting Shuo Wang

YEAH YEAH Ltd. is a Taiwan-based creative company that works at the intersection of ecology, education, design, and everyday life. Our team brings together backgrounds in biology, environmental education, exhibition planning, product development, and visual communication.

We focus on transforming scientific and ecological knowledge into accessible experiences for children, families, schools, communities, and brands. Our projects include educational exhibitions, learning programs, biodiversity-themed products, ecological installations, and public engagement initiatives.

Rather than treating design only as a visual outcome, we see it as a way to create participation and understanding. Through storytelling, interaction, and carefully designed learning experiences, we hope to make topics such as agriculture, insects, biodiversity, and sustainability easier to approach and more closely connected to daily life.

Our long-term goal is to bring biodiversity into everyday spaces, and to help people build a more emotional and practical relationship with nature.

For me, design is a form of translation. It is a way to transform complex academic knowledge and social issues into experiences that are engaging, understandable, and memorable.

Many important topics, such as ecology, agriculture, biodiversity, sustainability, and food systems, are often difficult for the general public to approach. Through design, we can reorganize information, create visual and interactive narratives, and guide people to enter these subjects with curiosity rather than distance.

I believe design has the power to improve the effectiveness of communication. It can make knowledge more attractive, lower the barrier to understanding, and help people build emotional connections with issues that may otherwise feel abstract or unrelated to their daily lives.

To me, good design does not only deliver information. It creates a pathway for people to notice, understand, care, and eventually take action.

I am most interested in designing works that belong to the field of social design. For me, the most meaningful design projects are those that begin with ecological, environmental, or social care issues, and then transform these concerns into experiences that people can understand, participate in, and feel connected to.

I especially enjoy projects that bring together education, public engagement, sustainability, and community participation. These works may take the form of exhibitions, workshops, learning tools, products, or interactive experiences, but their purpose is not only to present information. They are designed to create awareness, empathy, and action.

In our practice, design is an important communication tool. It allows us to translate complex environmental and social topics into accessible forms, so that more people can recognize their relevance to everyday life. This is why I feel that social design is the most important direction for our work.

Rather than naming one specific exhibition or design work, my favorite kind of design is one that begins with nature and respects the existing environment.

I am especially drawn to ecological design that does not try to dominate the landscape, but gently becomes part of it. To me, the best design for natural environments is often not the most visually striking or artificial one, but the one that uses the least intervention while creating the most meaningful relationship between people, nature, and place.

I appreciate designs that observe natural forms, local materials, seasonal changes, and ecological relationships, and then respond to them with sensitivity. These works do not separate design from nature, but allow design to quietly support, reveal, or enhance what is already there.

This is the ecological design approach I admire most: design that feels humble, gentle, and deeply connected to the land.

The first thing I designed for a company was an educational tool for soil and water conservation. It was a wooden teaching aid that allowed students to learn through hands-on operation, rather than only through textbooks or lectures.

The tool was designed to help children understand the relationship between terraced fields, water flow, soil conservation, and ecology. By physically manipulating the wooden structure, students could observe how landforms influence water movement, how terraces help reduce soil erosion, and how agricultural landscapes can also support ecological balance.

This early project had a strong influence on my later work. It made me realize that design can make environmental knowledge more tangible. When children can touch, move, test, and observe, abstract concepts become easier to understand and remember. Since then, I have continued to see design as a bridge between professional knowledge and public learning.

My favorite “platform” is physical interaction. In our design practice, I value hands-on experiences more than purely digital tools, especially because our main audience is often children.

In today’s digital age, children are already surrounded by screens and digital technology. However, when we work with themes such as ecology, agriculture, social design, and environmental education, real understanding often comes from direct experience. Participants need to touch, move, observe, compare, and make decisions with their own bodies in order to truly understand the concepts behind the design.

For this reason, we often use physical materials, interactive installations, teaching tools, and spatial experiences as our main design language. These tangible interactions help transform abstract issues into something concrete and memorable.

To me, technology does not always have to be digital. A well-designed object, a simple mechanical structure, or a carefully guided activity can also be a powerful technology for learning, communication, and social engagement.

I feel most creative when I am in nature, especially in the mountains or by the sea.

Natural environments always give me a strong sense of inspiration. When I am surrounded by forests, insects, plants, stones, wind, waves, or changing light, I become more sensitive to details and relationships that are often overlooked in everyday life.

For our team, nature is not only a source of visual inspiration, but also a place where we learn how systems are connected. Observing ecosystems helps us think about design in a more humble and organic way. It reminds us that good design should not simply impose ideas on the world, but should listen, respond, and create meaningful relationships between people, place, and the environment.

Many of our design ideas begin from this kind of observation.

During the design process, I focus most on clarity, participation, and impact.

Because many of our projects deal with academic knowledge, ecological issues, or social topics, the first thing I care about is whether the core message is accurate and clearly translated. A design may look attractive, but if people cannot understand the meaning behind it, the communication is not successful.

I also focus strongly on the user experience, especially for children and families. I think about how people enter the story, how they interact with the space or objects, and whether the experience encourages them to observe, ask questions, and make connections by themselves.

Finally, I care about what remains after the design experience. Good design should not only create a moment of attention. It should leave behind understanding, curiosity, empathy, or even a small change in behavior. For me, these are the most important aspects of design.

When I design, I often feel both joy and anxiety at the same time.

The joy comes from the process of turning an idea into something visible, tangible, and meaningful. I enjoy imagining how people will interact with the work, how children will respond to it, and how a complex concept can become an experience that feels interesting and approachable.

At the same time, I also feel a certain anxiety, because I care deeply about whether the audience can truly understand what we want to communicate. Many of our projects deal with ecological, educational, or social issues, so the responsibility of communication is very important to me.

This mixture of joy and anxiety keeps me attentive throughout the design process. It pushes me to keep asking: Is the message clear? Is the experience engaging? Will people remember something after they leave? For me, these emotions are part of designing with care.

When my designs are realized, the strongest emotion I feel is wonder.

Even though every project begins with research, discussion, and careful planning, the final result often still feels surprising to me. During the brainstorming process, ideas are usually fragmented, uncertain, and constantly changing. But through collaboration, testing, and refinement, those ideas gradually take shape and become something real.

I always find it fascinating that a series of conversations, sketches, questions, and small decisions can eventually turn into a unique experience that people can actually see, touch, and participate in.

For me, seeing a design realized is not only a moment of achievement. It is also a reminder of the magic of collaboration and imagination.

For me, a design is successful when the audience truly understands and responds to it.

Especially in exhibitions or educational projects, I believe success is not only measured by how rich the content looks, or how many issues are included in the design. The most important moment is when visitors, children, or users can describe in their own words what the design is trying to communicate.

When we receive feedback from the audience and realize that they have understood the meaning behind the experience, I feel that the design has fulfilled its purpose. This is particularly important when working with ecological, agricultural, or social topics, because these subjects can easily become too complex if we try to include everything at once.

A successful design should know what to leave out as much as what to include. If too many messages are forced into one project, the result may look abundant, but the audience may not remember anything clearly. Good design should create a clear pathway, allowing one meaningful idea to stay in people’s minds after the experience is over.

When judging whether a design is good or bad, I first consider its function and purpose.

A good design should clearly respond to the goal it was created for. Before judging its visual style, materials, or originality, I usually ask: What problem is this design trying to solve? Who is it designed for? Does it help the audience understand, participate, or act in the intended way?

Especially in educational, ecological, and social design projects, beauty alone is not enough. The design needs to communicate clearly and guide people toward the intended experience or understanding. If a design looks impressive but does not support its purpose, I do not consider it successful.

For me, good design is not only about appearance. It is about whether every element works together to serve the core goal.

From my point of view, designers have the responsibility to consider not only what they create, but also what kind of understanding, behavior, and relationship their work may encourage.

Design has the power to shape how people see and experience the world. It can make certain issues more visible, make complex knowledge easier to approach, and guide people toward more thoughtful choices. For this reason, I believe designers should be aware of the social and environmental messages carried by their work.

In relation to society, designers can help reduce the distance between professional knowledge and the general public. They should also think about who may be excluded from an experience, and how design can create more accessible ways for different people to participate. In this exhibition, for example, we included guided design for visually impaired visitors, so that the experience of food, agriculture, and local knowledge would not rely only on visual information.

In relation to the environment, designers should think carefully about materials, resources, and the relationship between humans and nature. Design should not only consume or decorate; it should also help people notice the systems that support our daily lives, such as food, agriculture, ecosystems, and biodiversity.

For me, the responsibility of a designer is not to force people to accept a message, but to create an entry point where more people can understand, care, and begin to act.

I think the design field is evolving beyond aesthetics alone. In the past, design was often discussed mainly in terms of beauty, function, originality, or market value. These aspects are still important, but I believe the future of design must place sustainability at the center of the process.

For me, future design should not only ask what we want to create, but also what resources will be used, what impact will be generated, and what kind of responsibility the design carries after it is produced. In our projects, we try to discuss sustainability from the very beginning, including materials, production methods, transportation, installation, reuse, waste, and the carbon emissions that may be created throughout the process.

I believe designers will need to become more aware of systems, not just objects. A design is not only the final outcome that people see. It is also connected to supply chains, energy use, environmental impact, social participation, and long-term maintenance.

The future of design, in my view, is more responsible, more interdisciplinary, and more closely connected to ecological and social sustainability.

Our most recent exhibition was a public awareness exhibition held in Taipei for a Taiwanese government agency. The exhibition used the concept of a hero’s adventure game to communicate an important message: when traveling abroad, people should not bring animal or plant quarantine items back to Taiwan.

Instead of presenting quarantine regulations only through text-based information, we transformed the topic into an interactive and story-driven experience. Through the game-like exhibition structure, visitors could better understand how personal travel behavior is connected to Taiwan’s agriculture, biodiversity, and ecological safety.

Our next exhibition will be the 2026 Food and Agriculture Education Exhibition for the New Taipei City Government. In this upcoming project, we will continue to explore how design can translate food, agriculture, ecology, and sustainability into engaging learning experiences for children and families.

The inspiration for my work mainly comes from two sources: interactions with children and observations of nature.

When I work with children, I am often inspired by the way they ask questions, notice details, and respond to the world with curiosity. Their reactions help me understand what is difficult, what is interesting, and what kind of experience can truly open a door to learning. Many of our design ideas begin from observing how children think, play, and discover.

Nature is another important source of inspiration. Ecosystems are full of relationships, structures, rhythms, and unexpected details. By observing insects, plants, landscapes, seasons, and ecological interactions, I often find new ways to think about design, storytelling, and participation.

I feed my creativity by staying close to real environments and real users. Instead of looking for inspiration only from design references, I try to learn from children, field observations, local communities, and the natural world. These experiences continuously remind me that design should be alive, responsive, and connected to the world around us.

I would describe my design style as nature-inspired, educational, and socially engaged.

My style does not come only from a visual preference, but from the way I work with ecology, children, and public communication. I am interested in designs that begin with real natural systems, local environments, and social issues, and then transform them into experiences that are warm, accessible, and easy to participate in.

The main characteristics of my style are storytelling, hands-on interaction, clear knowledge translation, and a gentle connection to nature. I prefer designs that do not feel overly artificial or distant from everyday life. Instead, I try to create works that invite people to observe, touch, play, ask questions, and gradually understand the meaning behind the experience.

I explored this style more deeply because many ecological and social topics are important, but they can feel difficult or distant to the general public. Through design, I hope to lower that barrier. My approach is to first understand the core knowledge or issue, then simplify and reorganize it into a clear experience, using visual language, spatial design, interaction, and narrative to guide people into the subject.

For me, design should not only present information. It should create a meaningful encounter between people, knowledge, and the world around them.

I live in Taiwan, a place that I see as one of Asia’s most open and vibrant democratic countries, while also existing under constant political pressure and uncertainty.

I believe this environment has deeply influenced the way we think about design. In Taiwan, we are surrounded by diverse cultural layers, including Indigenous cultures, agricultural traditions, local communities, immigrant influences, and contemporary civic movements. At the same time, we live with a strong awareness that freedom, identity, land, and daily life are not abstract ideas, but things that need to be continuously protected and discussed.

This has become an important source of nourishment for our design practice. It makes us more sensitive to social issues, local knowledge, environmental change, and the voices of different communities. It also encourages us to use design not only to create beautiful experiences, but to communicate, connect, and invite participation.

The advantage of designing in Taiwan is that the society is open, flexible, and full of creativity. People are willing to experiment, respond quickly, and participate in public issues. This gives designers many opportunities to create works that are closely connected to real life.

The challenge is that political pressure, limited resources, and social complexity often make design work more difficult. However, these challenges also push us to be clearer, more resilient, and more responsible in our communication. For me, living and designing in Taiwan means learning how to create with both freedom and awareness.

When we work with companies, we usually begin by understanding what they want to achieve and why they want to create the project.

Before entering the design stage, we spend time discussing the company’s goals, target audience, key message, and expected impact. This helps us clarify whether the project should focus more on education, branding, public communication, sustainability, or social engagement.

After that, we work together to refine the concept and visual direction. We try to identify the most important story behind the project, instead of immediately adding too many ideas or decorative elements. Once the direction is clear, we move into the design development stage, including experience design, visual language, spatial planning, interactive elements, or educational content, depending on the nature of the project.

For us, working with companies is a collaborative process. We do not simply provide a design result; we help transform their intentions into a clear and meaningful experience that can communicate effectively with the public.

My suggestion to companies is to first understand their own needs before looking for a designer. If a company searches for a designer without a clear purpose, it will be very difficult to find the right partner.

Before starting a collaboration, companies should try to clarify what they want to achieve, who they want to communicate with, and what problem or message they want the design to address. The designer can then help organize the content, identify the key message, and transform it into an effective design strategy and experience.

A good designer is not only someone who creates beautiful visuals. A good designer should be able to understand the company’s goals, ask the right questions, clarify complex information, and find the most suitable way to communicate with the audience.

For me, the best collaboration happens when the company has a clear intention, and the designer helps refine, translate, and shape that intention into a meaningful design.

My design process usually begins with understanding the core issue behind the project.

Before thinking about visual style or form, I first try to understand the context: What is the project trying to communicate? Who is the audience? What kind of change, awareness, or experience do we hope to create? This is especially important for our projects, because many of them involve ecological, educational, agricultural, or social topics.

After that, we move into research and knowledge translation. We collect information, organize the key concepts, and decide what should be simplified, emphasized, or transformed into an interactive experience. I believe that not all information needs to be shown at once. A good design process also involves choosing what to leave out, so the main message can become clearer.

Then we develop the story, spatial structure, visual language, and hands-on interactions. We pay close attention to how people enter the experience, how they participate, and what they may remember after leaving. For children and families, we especially focus on whether the experience is intuitive, playful, and easy to understand.

During the process, we also consider sustainability, materials, accessibility, production, installation, and the possible environmental impact of the project. Finally, we refine the design through discussion, testing, and feedback.

For me, design is not a straight line from idea to result. It is a process of listening, translating, testing, and adjusting until the message can truly reach people.

During the development of The Veggie School Festival Educational Exhibition, user testing with children and visually impaired participants changed our understanding of accessibility in a very practical way.At the beginning, accessibility could easily be understood as a matter of physical access, such as ramps, circulation routes, signage, or basic safety. These are essential, but through testing we realized that genuine accessibility in a public learning environment requires much more than allowing people to enter the space. It requires allowing them to participate in the meaning of the exhibition.When we observed how children and visually impaired participants interacted with the tactile and audio installations, we learned that access is not only about movement, but also about rhythm, clarity, confidence, and emotional connection. Some visitors needed more time to explore with their hands. Some children touched quickly and repeatedly. Some participants understood the story better through sound, while others needed a clearer relationship between touch, object, and response.These observations led us to adjust many details: the height and position of interactive elements, the texture and scale of plant forms, the sensitivity of the sensor patches, the timing of the audio response, the length and density of the narration, and the way visitors were guided through the experience. We also became more aware that sound should not simply provide information. It should help visitors build a spatial and emotional understanding of the agricultural world.One important lesson was that accessibility should not create a separate experience for visually impaired visitors. Instead, it should create a shared sensory language that allows visually impaired and sighted participants to learn together. In this exhibition, touch and sound were not supplementary features; they became central ways of understanding plants, agriculture, and the relationship between living beings and their environment.Through this process, we came to see inclusive design as a continuous act of listening and adjustment. It is not a checklist completed at the end of the project, but a design attitude that must shape the exhibition from the beginning. For us, genuine accessibility means that different visitors can enter the same story through different senses, and still feel equally invited, respected, and able to understand.

I believe the transferable value of this methodology does not lie only in the hardware itself, but in the way it transforms food systems into a shared sensory learning experience.Many urban residents are physically and emotionally distant from the processes that produce their food. Agriculture is often understood through labels, statistics, or environmental slogans, but these forms of communication can still feel abstract. In The Veggie School Festival Educational Exhibition, we tried to use conductive sensor modules and responsive audio systems to turn crops, soil, seasons, and farming environments into something visitors could touch, hear, and explore with their bodies.This methodology can become a useful model for other civic institutions because it provides a flexible structure. A museum, school, library, community center, or public exhibition can adapt the same logic to its own local food culture and agricultural issues. The plants, sounds, stories, and scientific messages can all be changed according to the region, while the core principle remains the same: translate invisible systems into sensory interaction.For example, instead of simply explaining that plants respond to environmental changes, we allowed visitors to touch plant installations and hear different sound responses from different crops. This helped communicate that plants are living beings connected to their surroundings, and that agriculture is not only about production, but also about relationships among soil, water, climate, plants, insects, farmers, and consumers.The important point is that technology should not become the main character. It should serve as a bridge. In this project, the sensors and audio responses were used to create curiosity, emotional connection, and accessibility. They helped children, visually impaired participants, and sighted visitors enter the same story through different senses.For civic institutions, this offers a practical model: begin with a local issue, identify the knowledge gap, translate key concepts into tactile and auditory cues, test the experience with real users, and refine the interaction until it becomes intuitive and meaningful. Through this process, public education can move beyond passive information display and become an embodied experience.In this sense, The Veggie School Festival Educational Exhibition suggests that agricultural education in cities does not have to remain distant from daily life. With thoughtful design, food systems can become something people can feel, listen to, and understand together.

Receiving recognition through the A' Event and Happening Design Award is very meaningful to us, not only because it acknowledges the creativity and execution of the exhibition, but also because it recognizes the importance of public experience design as a form of social and environmental communication.The Veggie School Festival Educational Exhibition was not created simply as an agricultural event or a children’s activity. From the beginning, we hoped to bring together agricultural literacy, sensory accessibility, and civic engagement within one shared public space. Food is something everyone depends on, but the systems behind food production are often distant from urban life. Through design, we wanted to make those systems more visible, more approachable, and more emotionally connected to everyday experience.This recognition makes us feel that designers have a broader responsibility when shaping public events. We are not only arranging spaces or creating attractive visuals. We are also deciding what kinds of relationships people may notice, what voices may be included, and what issues may become easier to understand.In this exhibition, we tried to create a space where children, families, visually impaired participants, and general visitors could all enter the same story through different senses. By using touch, sound, play, and storytelling, we hoped to help people understand that food is connected to soil, seasons, plants, farmers, ecology, and community life.For us, the award reflects a belief that shared urban spaces can become places of learning, empathy, and ecological awareness. Designers have the responsibility to create experiences that do more than attract attention. They should help communities reconnect with the systems that sustain them, and with the people and living beings that share the same environment.

The most defining obstacle for us was how to translate something that is naturally seasonal, outdoor, and bodily experienced into an indoor civic space, while also making that experience meaningful for different groups of visitors, including children and visually impaired participants.Agricultural education is usually rooted in direct experience: touching soil, observing crops over time, feeling weather changes, and understanding how seasons shape food. However, in the New Taipei City Hall Civic Lobby, we were working within an urban public environment that was bright, fast-moving, and highly artificial. We could not simply recreate a farm. We had to ask ourselves: when the real field is absent, can people still feel the presence of agriculture through other senses?This question became especially important when we considered diverse audiences. We wanted to know whether touch and sound could strengthen the way visually impaired visitors, children, and general audiences experience agriculture. For some visitors, visual information is not enough or may not be accessible at all. For others, especially young children, understanding often begins from touching, listening, playing, and bodily exploration.This challenge changed the direction of the installation. At first, it would have been easy to present agriculture through information panels, crop displays, or decorative scenery. But we realized that this would not create a deep enough connection. The exhibition needed to create a sensory memory, not just deliver facts.As a result, we placed more emphasis on tactile and auditory design. The tactile plants, sensor patches, and responsive audio system allowed visitors to experience crops as living beings that could respond to touch. Different plant sounds helped communicate the idea that plants are sensitive to environmental changes and connected to one another. In this way, touch and sound became not only accessible features, but also central educational tools.Navigating this challenge also made us more selective. We could not include every agricultural issue at once. Instead, we focused on creating clear sensory entry points: What does a plant feel like? What might a plant’s response sound like? How does food relate to seasons? How are people, crops, soil, and environment connected?In the end, the obstacle of bringing farm-based education into an urban civic lobby helped us define the philosophical and sensory character of the exhibition. The final installation was not designed to imitate a farm, but to awaken an awareness of agriculture within the city. It invited visitors to understand food production not as something distant, but as a living system that can be felt, heard, and connected to everyday life.

The experiential sequence of The Veggie School Festival Educational Exhibition was designed as a gradual shift from observation, to sensory engagement, and finally to personal creation.We began with local agricultural growth stories because we wanted visitors to first understand that food does not appear suddenly in daily life. It comes from land, climate, seasons, farmers, and local environments. This opening section provided the basic context and helped visitors recognize agriculture as a living system connected to their own city and everyday meals.The second stage introduced tactile and sound-based interaction with plants. After visitors understood the agricultural stories, we wanted them to move beyond looking and begin feeling. Through touching plant installations and hearing different sound responses, visitors could experience plants as living beings that sense environmental changes and communicate with their surroundings. This stage was especially important for children and visually impaired participants, because it allowed knowledge to be accessed through the body, not only through vision or text.The final stage invited visitors to construct a personally imagined farm. This was a deliberate decision. We did not want the exhibition to end with passive information reception. Instead, we wanted visitors to reorganize what they had learned and express it through their own choices. By building a farm, they had to think about relationships: What crops should be planted? What kind of environment do plants need? How do people, food, soil, water, insects, and seasons coexist?Our inclusive design research and user testing showed us that genuine learning happens more deeply when visitors are allowed to participate, decide, and create. Children often understand concepts better when they can transform information into play. Visually impaired participants also benefited when the experience was not limited to explanation, but included touch, spatial imagination, and active construction.For this reason, the ending of the exhibition was designed as an act of creative personal agency. It gave visitors the opportunity to become part of the agricultural story, rather than only observing it from outside. We believe public learning should not only deliver knowledge. It should help people feel that they are capable of imagining, choosing, and shaping a more sustainable relationship with food and the environment.

The research and testing behind The Veggie School Festival Educational Exhibition confirmed for us that tactile and audio interaction can significantly strengthen engagement and comprehension, especially when working with diverse participant groups.For our future work, the most important influence is not that we will simply repeat the same technology or installation format. Rather, this project has helped us establish a clearer methodology for public learning design: begin with the subject matter, examine the scientific foundation, identify what is difficult to understand through text or vision alone, and then translate those concepts into spatial, tactile, auditory, and participatory experiences.Our team includes members with backgrounds in biology and agriculture, so our interactive designs are not developed only from imagination or visual appeal. Before designing a game or installation, we first study relevant scientific literature and verify the knowledge behind the topic. Only after understanding the ecological or agricultural principles do we begin to transform them into playful and accessible interactions. This process helps ensure that the final experience is not only engaging, but also scientifically grounded.The spatial strategy developed in this exhibition will continue to influence how we design learning journeys. We now think more carefully about how visitors move from awareness to sensory exploration, and then to personal interpretation or action. This structure can be applied beyond agriculture. Whether the topic is biodiversity, climate change, public health, cultural heritage, or social care, we believe public learning should guide people from noticing, to feeling, to making meaning for themselves.The interaction principles are also transferable. In The Veggie School Festival Educational Exhibition, touch and sound were not used as decorative effects. They were designed as tools for knowledge translation. This principle can be adapted to many ecological or social topics: invisible systems can be made perceptible, abstract relationships can become embodied, and complex knowledge can be experienced through multiple senses.Most importantly, the inclusive methodology from this project has changed how we define the starting point of design. Accessibility should not be added at the end as a supplementary feature. It should shape the entire design from the beginning, including the choice of media, the rhythm of interaction, the clarity of information, and the emotional safety of the experience.In future projects, even when the audience, institution, or subject matter is very different, we will continue to ask the same questions: What is the scientific or social knowledge that must be carefully understood first? Who might be excluded if the experience depends only on vision, text, or prior knowledge? What other senses can help people enter the story? How can design create a shared learning environment where different participants can understand in different ways, but still feel equally included?For us, The Veggie School Festival Educational Exhibition was not only an agricultural education project. It became a model for designing public learning as a multi-sensory, inclusive, scientifically grounded, and emotionally meaningful experience.

One dimension of The Veggie School Festival Educational Exhibition that I feel deserves deeper attention is the role of sensory accessibility as a core design language, rather than as an additional support system.In many public exhibitions, accessibility is still treated as something added after the main experience has already been designed. It may appear as supplementary signage, alternative routes, or separate explanations for specific groups. These elements are important, but in this project, we wanted to explore whether accessibility could become central to how everyone learns.The tactile plants, sensor patches, and responsive audio system were initially developed to support diverse participants, including visually impaired visitors and children. However, one of the most meaningful findings was that these sensory interactions did not benefit only one group. Sighted visitors, families, and children also became more engaged when they could touch, listen, and receive responses from the plants. This showed us that inclusive design can improve the experience for all participants, not only for those who are usually categorized as needing special support.I think this point deserves more attention from the design community. Inclusive design should not be understood only as a matter of solving limitations. It can also open new possibilities for storytelling, emotional connection, and knowledge translation. In our exhibition, touch and sound allowed visitors to understand that plants are living beings that respond to their environment and are connected to larger ecological systems. This idea might have remained abstract if it were presented only through text or images.Another important dimension is that sensory design must still be grounded in knowledge. Our team includes members with backgrounds in biology and agriculture, so the interactions were not created only for entertainment. They were developed after studying scientific literature and considering how agricultural and ecological concepts could be translated into public learning. This balance between scientific accuracy and emotional experience is something I hope more public exhibitions will continue to explore.For me, the most unexpected and valuable response was seeing different visitors enter the same story through different senses. Children played, visually impaired participants explored through touch and sound, and sighted adults rediscovered agriculture in a more physical way. This reminded us that public design can do more than present information. It can create a shared space where different people feel equally invited to learn, imagine, and participate.

The citizen engagement zone of The Veggie School Festival Educational Exhibition was designed to move visitors from receiving information to making choices.One of the key participatory mechanisms was the final farm-building activity. After visitors observed local agricultural stories and experienced plants through touch and sound, they were invited to construct their own imagined farm. This was not simply a playful ending. It was designed as a decision-making exercise. Visitors had to think about what crops to include, what kind of environment plants need, and how soil, water, insects, seasons, farmers, and consumers are connected.We also used question-based guidance throughout the exhibition to encourage family and group conversations. Instead of giving visitors only fixed answers, the experience asked them to compare, choose, and explain. For children, this allowed agricultural knowledge to become something they could express in their own words. For adults, it created an opportunity to reconsider everyday food choices, such as seasonality, local production, and the environmental relationships behind food.The tactile and audio installations also served as participatory mechanisms. By allowing visitors to touch the plants and hear different responses, the exhibition suggested that plants and agricultural systems are not passive background elements, but living systems that respond to environmental conditions. This helped shift the visitor’s role from observer to participant within the story.In terms of evaluation, we were careful not to claim that a short-term exhibition alone could fully measure long-term behavioral change. Instead, we focused on whether the exhibition successfully created the beginning of civic agency. We observed how long visitors stayed, whether they returned to interact with the installations, whether children explained the concepts to parents or teachers, and whether participants could describe the relationship between food, plants, seasons, and environment after the experience.Qualitative feedback was especially important to us. When visitors were able to say, in their own words, that food is connected to land, ecology, and daily choices, we saw this as an important sign that the exhibition had gone beyond passive information delivery.For us, sustaining civic agency does not always mean that a single exhibition immediately changes every behavior. It means planting a question that follows visitors after they leave: What kind of food system am I part of, and what choices can I make within it? The exhibition was designed to create that first moment of awareness, ownership, and responsibility.

The material and interaction surfaces in The Veggie School Festival Educational Exhibition were selected according to three main principles: sensory clarity, educational meaning, and public durability.Because this exhibition was designed for children, families, and visually impaired participants, the surfaces could not be chosen only for visual beauty. They needed to be safe to touch, easy to understand through the hands, durable enough for repeated public use, and meaningful in relation to the agricultural concept. We wanted each surface to help visitors feel that they were encountering plants, fruits, vegetables, soil, and farming environments, rather than simply touching decorative objects.When selecting the fruits and vegetables for tactile experience, we deliberately chose forms with different textures, shapes, scales, and surface qualities. Some had smoother surfaces, some had stronger ridges, some were round, and others had more irregular or elongated forms. This diversity was important because it allowed visually impaired participants to build a richer understanding of agricultural produce through touch. It also helped children notice that crops are not uniform objects, but living things with distinct forms and characteristics.We also incorporated a braille guidance system beside the exhibition texts. The height and position of the braille information were carefully considered so that visually impaired visitors could naturally reach and follow the guidance during the experience. Rather than treating braille as an additional label placed after the design was completed, we considered it part of the visitor’s movement and tactile journey from the beginning.For the tactile plant installations, we paid close attention to texture contrast, scale, edge treatment, touching area, and the position of sensor patches. A surface needed to be clear enough for visually impaired participants to distinguish by touch, but also gentle and inviting enough for young children. The interaction geometry was also important. If the touch point was too small, visitors might miss it. If it was too large or too sensitive, accidental contact could trigger the sound and weaken the connection between action and response.The testing process with children and visually impaired participants helped us refine many details. We adjusted the height and angle of interactive elements, the size of the touchable areas, the sensitivity of the sensor patches, the timing of the audio response, and the relationship between tactile exploration and braille reading. We also learned that the relationship between texture and sound had to be intuitive. Visitors needed to feel that the sound belonged to the plant they were touching, rather than coming from a separate technical system.One surprise was that tactile design created a deeper emotional response than we first expected. For visually impaired participants, the textures, braille guidance, and audio responses provided a way to enter the agricultural story without relying on sight. For children, the same surfaces encouraged curiosity, repetition, and play. Some children touched the plants again and again, not only to trigger sound, but to test whether the plants would “respond” differently. This helped reinforce the idea that plants are living beings that can sense and react to their environment.Another important finding was that accurate realism was not always the most effective approach. Sometimes, a slightly simplified or emphasized texture helped visitors understand the concept more clearly than a visually realistic surface. This reminded us that material design in public learning should not only imitate nature. It should translate nature into a form that different bodies and senses can read.In the end, the materials and interaction surfaces became part of the exhibition’s storytelling. They carried scientific meaning, emotional resonance, and inclusive access at the same time. Through iterative testing, we learned that a good tactile interface is not just something people touch. It is something that helps people feel invited, confident, curious, and connected to the living systems behind food and agriculture.