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In the last episode, we got the chance to interview with the Grand Prize winner of FourC Challenge 24-hour Global Design Charrette Contest and dig deep into the secrets of their design process. Today, we will start introducing winning team from another perspective —— namely the topic of this contest, "Flower", to have a quick glimpse of how they present their design in the post-epidemic era.
Dandelion——Flowing with the wind, connecting from the heart
TEAM - SEEDS
Our team chose dandelion as the core of this design, because it has characteristics of pure, light, modular, and shares as a symbol of life. In brainstorming session, we studied China's contactless takeaway service, emotional isolation between people, encouraging social public donation, design defects of protective clothing, humanized design of disinfection appliances, and many other problem space. After comparing the impact and coverage of various issues on society, we finally decided the topic of "stall-economy". It was considered that the high unemployment rate after the epidemic would become a very serious and urgent problem to be solved. Therefore, we believe it is important to provide an opportunity for the unemployed to start a new life by developing the stall- economy.
Although four of us are all majoring in design, we have different strengths. MAI Qiuyu and XU Haoxue from architecture and Industrial Design are good at 3D modeling and rendering. HOU Jie, who is also from Industrial Design, is better at graphic and layouts. ZHU Yitong, a student in interactive design, is good at video production. This has laid the foundation for our smooth cooperation. After the concept is formed, we can quickly divide the works to produce models, reports and video. We cooperate and be independent so as to complete the task efficiently. In the early stage of brainstorming, we can analyze from different angles, complement with each other, and look at each step of our conclusion with critical thinking, gradually changing the concept of SEEDS from urban art interactive design into an industrial design for folding stalls, and finally into a service design for stall rental systems. In addition, we are constantly digging into the deeper meaning of dandelion, discussing the modularization trend of individual development, and assimilate individual business with a dandelion seed, jumping out of the form of dandelion itself and adding social significance to the design.
The COVID-19 has completely disrupted our life. Once we used to go to school, work, party, shopping and other outdoor activities, now it becomes strange. And when social isolation, remote office, and contactless social networking have become the new normal in people's lives, these psychology and habits will also be unconsciously extended to the post-epidemic period. The purpose of this contest is to "Reconnect", which is to redefine the relationship between people and the bonds between the various elements of the entire society. Through the support of innovative design and technology, we hope that people can see a way to balance between security and connection, and in the process gradually restore the operation of society. This is a common appeal that transcends nationality and race, and is also the mission of designers in this age. We believe that whether the future transportation, stall rental system or AI robots, the ultimate goal of the design should and will always be making lives better.
TEAM - Dandelion
Our main inspiration comes from dandelion. Dandelion has an aggregated beauty while each piece of dandelion can survive without the whole with the advantages of lightness and strong mobility, which is similar to the relationship between independent stalls and the whole market. In the past days, the bazaars and market stalls cause safety and hygiene concerns. Under the impact of COVID-19, a large number of unemployed people and closed stores remind us to re-plan stalls to protect people's livelihood and stimulate economic development. From the management perspective, we construct the overall system in a unified manner with the advantages of stall-economy considered: low-cost operation, flexible and low-carbon, and a spontaneous formation of a bottom-up market space. We treat each food stall as a standardized and plannable individual, maintain the spatial strength of a reasonable social distance and at the same time completes the service of user behavior in three types of market combination models.
We have been focusing on the exchange of concepts and how to achieve the optimal solution of the professional integration of our ideas. Many brilliant thoughts have also been burst out. This is the very first time for us to attend this charrette contest, and we have learned a lot from corporation and communication.
Marigold —— Remember me before the memory of love disappears
TEAM - FLOWEVER
At the beginning of the 24 hours, our team came out with several ideas through brainstorming, finally we decided to use marigold as the inspiration for the design from the corresponding relationship of "withering and blooming of flowers —— the fading life and reconnection". We plan to build an online platform called Flowever. It is designed for people to pin their grief and post message of the deceased, so as to establish a reconnection with the people who passed away. Flowever is a combined word of "Flower" and "forever", stands for the "eternal flower".
The movie "Coco" said: "The real death is that no one in the world remembers you." We advocate that death is not the end of life. People's memories of the deceased should be beautiful and memorable, but not painful or with sorrow.
With the blossoming marigolds gathering, the user interface on Flowever will gradually light up, and people can checkout general information of the deceased in the flowers grown by others through the application. For every flower raised, the staff from Flowever will set up a flower bulb model with a QR code in the central memorial area of the city (such as the flower bed in front of the hospital). Every night, the sea of lights composed of flowers will be lighted up in the city, forming a magnificent scene, to commemorate the people who died in the COVID-19. At the same time, people can scan the QR code on the flowers through the scanning function of the application to browse their photos, voice messages, etc.
There is a huge loss in the COVID-19, and many lives passed away, but we sincerely hope that people can have another sense of "reconnection" with them through other ways.
Tumbleweeds——Living and Thriving
TEAM - Four-Man
At the beginning of the contest, our team emanated multiple design ideas through brainstorming. We then chose to cut into the new normal of "stall economy" and look for related plants and flowers. Tumbleweed is a common plant in the Gobi Desert. When the drought comes, it will gather the roots from the soil and form a ball rolling around with the wind. It is a plant with extremely strong vitality. They will always find an environment suitable for their own growth, and sprout new shoots, shoot out new branches, and eventually bloom a red flower. We believe that this is very similar to the characteristics of stall economy. Stalls and roadside booth go everywhere, and it has strong liquidity and uncertainty. Before, stalls were not allowed by government, and the relationship between stall owners and city administrative officers was tense and conflicting. So, our design inspiration came immediately: a mobile stall management system. In the post-epidemic era, reconnecting the economy should be controllable, orderly, and positive for social development.
We believe that in the post-epidemic era, it is important to find ways to recover the economy, but solving the problem solely by using industrial product monomers, such as street vehicles, is often restricted by the output of the product, and limiting the number of participants, so we decided to use a combination of software and products to help people put aside their barriers and participate in economic recovery activities by creating a better environment and management model.
Reconnecting in the post-epidemic era is an inevitable process for human society. It should be full of humanity and carefulness, but must also be moderate, orderly, and sustainable. Design is a kind of power with small details yet a broad mind. The imagination of a few designers can bring benefits to the majority. Now that the domestic epidemic is under control, it is time for our designers to explore future and become an invisible leading character in turning back people’s life to normal.
彼岸花——Always Be with You
TEAM - Concomitance
During the epidemic, people were forced to stay at home, and traditional social forms faced challenges: offline social communication has risks and social forms are limited; online social communication mostly uses text communication, and the emotion transmission efficiency is low; the quarantine is too long, and the emotions are negative; people are longing for interesting social forms. So we think of a design around these above issues. First of all, we chose Red Spider Lily as the core of the design. It is extremely beautiful and represents companionship, means that even if I am not with you, I am still with you. Like the COVID-19, close friends and families are forced to separate from two places, but they can still spend their time with each other on the application we designed.
Comparing with voice message, we believe that texts are lack of some personal emotions, which can easily cause obstacles and misunderstanding. So we use sounds as the design theme, linking the sounds to the actual geographic location, trying to make the user soundly immersive. Voice is full of emotion and power, hearing the sound make users feels as if never separated . This is also in line with the theme of "Reconnect" in this contest.
