I am now an MFA postgraduate student majoring in curating at the ICCI(Institute of Cultural and Creative Industry), Shanghai Jiao Tong University. In June 2021, I graduated from the China Academy of Art. During my undergraduate, I studied urban design with a focus on architecture. In my past education, I have gained many opportunities for multidisciplinary collaboration, and these experiences diversify my understanding of public space design. Therefore, I have gradually realized that city should not be limited to physical space. 

My ambition: reshaping the civic media

Recently, digital media and mobile devices in cities are dramatically changing our daily lives as well as the way we are experiencing the urban environment around us. The interaction between technology, cities and human reshapes the concept of  “neighborhood”. This means that we are increasingly perceiving everything in the city from digital tools in aid of complex algorithms. The current state of technology transforms the concept of time and space, and such transformation provides infinite possibilities for urban public life. Based on those mentioned above, the city represents the lifestyles and social relationships of human beings nowadays and urban lifestyle plays an essential role in coordinating individual and collective identities. Thus, cities can be interpreted as the "interface". The feeling of getting involved in a group is not about co-location but is contingent on the information connection with civic media. Beyond contemplating on the theory, I actively put it into practice, with the “micro-city” project to embody my ideas concerning “city as an interface” (http://www.yuetong-chen.com/micro-city/). In the project, I designed a mobile tower structure installation, combining the dissipative structure theory in system science with the real promotion behaviors that occur in urban commercial spaces. The dynamic and adaptive spatial design supported the interaction between people and space. This design strategy was taken as an implementation of the concept “city as an interface”. This project revealed my interest in interaction design. After that, I tried to think out of the box regarding physical space and placed more focus on the medium connecting cities and humans in the information age. As the Sociologist Bary Wellman mentioned about “networked individualism”, viewing the city as an interface from the perspective of interaction media promotes the emergence of individualization, but this does not mean that people are more isolated. On the contrary, human beings have more communication in different communities, and an intricate network of urban social contact is gradually weaved. Equipped with an initial understanding of this field, I found that civic media, supported by digital technology, can be taken as a virtual public space for people to freely participate in social life. In this way, citizens get more independent in conveying ideas, but also more connected with each other in making collective decisions. The city, as a sort of huge interface, enables a more individualized and liberalized urban life. I want to dive deeper into designing the human-city interaction, to reshape urban life and rebuild common memories.

My practices: diverse contexts, methods and, people

My profound interest in interaction design motivated me to conduct more design practices. For example, I used to participate in an industrial design competition, aiming to design a tea-making device for the visually impaired group (http://www.yuetong-chen.com/tea-time/). Through the user research, I found that the needs of the target users were not significantly different from those of the ordinary people, the only distinction was the way they perceive the world. In my opinion, the most important thing in this design is trying to understand such a unique way of experiencing the external world. The visually impaired are unwilling to ignore details in life due to physical disabilities and choosing a suitable brewing method is respect for good tea, so meeting the needs of the visually impaired to make tea in different ways guide this design. Designing for the visually impaired provided me with a deeper understanding of how individuals perceive and interact with daily life in the city. In campus, I was an active volunteer, from reconstructing ancient buildings, guiding the museum exhibitions, to helping the vulnerable groups. These experiences nudged me to ponder over touchpoints of people in a city as well as reflect on social issues from multiple attitudes. Such reflection motivated me to try design practices for different social contexts. For instance, FOBO, an education product, helped to cultivate children's concept of financial management (http://www.yuetong-chen.com/fobo-kids/). This product was designed in children’s language, personalized for different cognitive abilities, as well as enriched with the touchpoints of AR technology. Another project, "Bridge Plan" (http://www.yuetong-chen.com/bridge-plan/), focused on reshaping the tourism service after the epidemic and tried to explore the psychological impacts of Covid-19 on the citizens in Wuhan due to the social distance, as well as to help Wuhan people regain the confidence in traveling. The design practices of these two projects strengthened my determination to explore more in the area of interaction design. Besides, I extended my exploration in this field through the internship. I am currently working at the Institute of Psychology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences as a user researcher in a public welfare project for mental health education, which is still not mature in China. There are more than 60 pilot schools involved in the project. My main job is to communicate with teachers and students to generate insights for designing and iterating coursed of mental education. Communicating with real-world stakeholders enables me to utilize design intervention to meet user needs.

My route in Computing

I am eager to start my next journey in Computing, where I can gain a different way of thinking and broaden my horizons. I believe it will provide a platform for me to understand Electronics and computer technology with a unique perspective from the sphere of digital design.

Cross-cultivation of creativity, innovation, and user experience is what I am most interested in this discipline. Related courses in Virtual Reality and Augmented and Mixed Realities, especially Data and Machine Learning for Artistic Practice and UX design, can help me better understand mobile services and IoT systems in the city as well as master interdisciplinary methods to design interactive products. I hope that in the following learning process, I can acquire not only vision, psychology, insight, and other related design skills but also more technical realization capabilities. Starting with the new media in the city to interpret“the city as interface” which can further explore the direction of urban social innovation.

In the future, I will continue to seek the possible roles and tasks of designers, deal with social issues and initiate social innovation for humanity in the real world.