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Service design theme study

2023-02-16 13:59

Target: All graduate students of Tsinghua University

Class time: Spring semester

Duration: 32 class hours (2 credits)

In 2022, the COVID-19 epidemic will continue, and life and work patterns around the world have changed greatly from the past. At the same time, people are actively seeking better breakthroughs, such as reconstructing social and work environments through metaverse and other means.

In February of this year, the representative office of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations in China collaborated with the School of Fine Arts at Tsinghua University to carry out a postgraduate course on "Service Design Special Research", shifting the focus to Global Important Agricultural Cultural Heritage (GIAHS), hoping to contribute to the global important agricultural cultural heritage under the epidemic through the power of design. At present, the course has just ended. Let's take a look at the course results together and understand the innovative solutions of our classmates!

The theme of this course is "Future Agricultural Heritage - Metaverse Service Design for GIAHS". GIAHS was initiated by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations in 2002. It is not only an outstanding landscape, but also showcases the diversity of agricultural ecology, adaptability of ecosystems, and precious cultural heritage.

This course utilizes the metaverse platform Roblox to carry out service design projects, attempting to create new experiences and social spaces that can connect the world through the metaverse, bringing new opportunities for agricultural innovation. In the metaverse, GIAHS not only reproduces and displays cultural heritage content, interacts with the younger generation, but also promotes international exchange and generates economic value.

Course Overview

During the 8-week course, student groups from Tsinghua University designed services for 5 GIAHS heritage sites. The core of the course content is the basic theory, methods, and tools of service design. Through several workshops, the theory is combined with practice to consolidate knowledge for students through creative activities. At the same time, experts from the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) GIAHS, agricultural experts, Roblox mentors, and NFT (Non Homogeneous Token) artists were also invited to share and broaden the horizons of students from different perspectives.

Dong Le, an innovation officer from the representative office of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations in China, Fu Zhiyong, an associate professor at the School of Fine Arts at Tsinghua University, and experts from Tencent's Roblox software provided specific guidance throughout the entire process for the students. Experts and scholars from different fields such as the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs of China, Nanjing Agricultural University of China, Gifu Prefecture Ministry of Agriculture in Japan, Chungnam Research Institute in South Korea, Ifugao State University in the Philippines, and China Academy of Arts also participated remotely and deeply in course guidance and homework evaluation. © Food and Agriculture Organization/Tsinghua University

With the coordination and support of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, students engage in online discussions with agricultural experts from various countries and maintain continuous communication after class. Each group completed service design works for GIAHS through user research, participatory workshops, design thinking, and other methods, and built their own service design system in the metaverse.

This course design and approach has left a deep impression on experts and guests from various countries, and students have a deep understanding of the course. After the course, the students who participated in the course believed that "in the cultivation of master's degree, the combination of learning methods and applications is very important. The essence of our class is to combine professional knowledge and good application platforms to explore the future. Although the metaverse is still a new carrier and may not be recognized by the public, as graduate students, this spirit of combining research, exploration, and application should be encouraged."

Course outcomes

In the course, students delved into the current problems faced by GIAHS in various regions and conducted comprehensive understanding of local people's livelihoods, culture, beliefs, customs, language, lifestyle, consumption habits, etc. through various research methods. Innovative designs were carried out from different perspectives such as scene reproduction, holiday activity games, storyline experience, and immersive service systems to transform offline agricultural heritage issues into online metaverse innovation solutions. Finally, solutions such as "Pu'er Xiaoyuan", "Metaverse Wedding - The Story of Torreya", "Breath of Green Fields", "Changliang River in the Metaverse", and "Korean Participation in the Metaverse Festival" were proposed. During the final presentation of the course, experts from the International Exchange Service Center of the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs, the Chinese Agricultural History Society, and Nanjing Agricultural University provided feedback and guidance on various proposals.

Among them, "Changliang River in the Metaverse" starts from the perspective of constructing an IP image, making Japanese fragrant fish the main IP image of Changliang River, attempting to provide new cultural genes for Changliang River through digital IP. The project combines online fishing experience, creating fragrant fish NFTs, fragrant fish trading, cooking and other gamified tasks; And the offline Changliang River metaverse post office postcards, free fishing experience, fragrant fish food products, etc., have completed the linkage between online and offline, playing a role in promoting Changliang River fragrant fish culture and promoting local economic development.

"The Metaverse Korean Ginseng Festival" and "The Story of Chinese Torreya" are based on festival activities and games, creating virtual Jinshan Ginseng Festival activities and virtual ancient Chinese Torreya group weddings. During the research, students found that due to the epidemic, local traditional festival activities have been forced to be cancelled, and the effectiveness of cultural promotion has weakened. Therefore, these two works aim to recreate festival activities online, allowing people from all over the world to participate in local festivals without leaving their homes. While promoting local culture, they can also form an online and offline linkage. For example, completing a task or achievement online can earn local agricultural products.

"The Breath of Green Fields" and "Pu'er Small Garden" focus on scene restoration, presenting the local agricultural environment, cultural customs, and clothing characteristics in a virtual space. Through game storylines, they form a series of experiences, allowing people from all over to understand the agricultural heritage site and evoke empathy for the local culture through emotional drama.

This course provides innovative design solutions for five important agricultural cultural heritage sites in four countries: China, the Philippines, South Korea, and Japan. Students use a service design mindset to create GIAHS, conducting in-depth research using tools such as user profiling, stakeholder analysis, STEEP analysis, future signals, service blueprints, and lean canvases. Using the metaverse as a carrier, they combine the virtual world of the online metaverse with the real heritage sites offline, inspiring the promotion and value transformation of local culture Innovative service design solutions that help with content accumulation.