Seoul Design
International Forum
서울디자인국제포럼

Crime, School Violence, Stress, Obesity... Can We Find Solutions Through “Design?”

Narrow and complex alleys where criminals could hide and flee easily were improved with healthy community content. This region formed a strong bond among residents by closely cooperating with the community service center, district office, and police. “A” is a 31-year-old office worker who gets scared on the way home from work late at night. The shanty town crowded with old houses has somehow become gloomier after the termination of the rebuilding project. “B” living in Gasan-dong, Geumcheon-gu, is in a similar circumstance. “B” feels bleak to walk in a place packed with houses and small factories where there is no one else in sight. The way to go home, the most comfortable place, became the scariest route. In response to this unfortunate paradox, the SMG prepared for a realistic countermeasure with “design.” This solution was derived from the process of changing the scariest route to an enjoyable route, gathering residents, and letting criminals know.

Good Environments Make the Youth Emotionally Healthy

“Social problem-solving design” that changed our everyday life — youth problem-solving design The social problem-solving design project of the SMG that began since 2011 has undergone a transition from a “policy-centered” design to a “human-centered” design by proving its effects and receiving the attention of residents. Accordingly, the SMG started the design project in 2014 to solve problems faced by the youth, such as school violence, emotional anxiety, digital dependency, and peer relationships. The first step was the school violence prevention design project which sought points for improvement by analyzing various causes of school violence. The project name was changed to youth problem-solving design in 2018 as its scope has been expanded from school violence to other youth problems that are regarded as social issues. In particular, the necessity of the project emerges from the fact that problematic behaviors of the youth are worsening in terms of the quality and diversifying in terms of the types and targets. There is an urgent need for a solution that considers the developmental stage of the youth and regional characteristics. The youth problem-solving design project of the SMG will be examined by focusing on six representative cases of youth problems.

Does the Crime Rate Drop By Changing Designs?

“Social problem-solving design” that changed our everyday life — life safety design The SMG implemented a design policy in 2007 and carried out city-centered policies for landscape improvement to reinforce the city brand. As a result, Seoul won the Grand Prize at the Index Awards, renowned for “Design to Improve Life,” in 2011. While looking for ways to use the prize money that came with the award, the SMG thought of socially disadvantaged citizens who could not benefit from the design policy. The SMG took a new step forward with the “social problem-solving design” project, which aims to reduce the grievances of people who cannot benefit from policies due to various reasons like having a busy livelihood. Having launched its first life safety design project in 2012, the SMG strengthened the roles of design in solving various social issues. Instead of policies and macroscopic systems, the concept of design has been expanded to public design to solve problems of varying sizes that influence the lives of people. The social problem-solving design projects of the SMG are divided into categories such as life safety design, cognitive health design, stress-free design, youth problem-solving design, and design governance. Each project utilizes the “service design” methodology, which derives relationship-centered solutions based on communication and awareness improvement beyond the improvement of the physical environment regarding social issues. This year, the social problem-solving design projects of the SMG marks its 10th anniversary. In celebration, we intend to take a close look at our surrounding environment and public design that have undergone small and large changes.

Increased Happiness Index: Reduced Stress With a Change of Design.

Korea is the Republic of Stress. According to the Korea Institute for Health and Social Affairs in 2016, over 90% of adults are stressed in their everyday life. In the 2016 Seoul Survey, over 53.5% of Seoul citizens responded they felt stressed in the past two weeks. As such, stress is becoming increasingly generalized and chronic in the lives of contemporary people, but there is no definite measure to avoid stress. Based on this idea, the SMG planned “stress-free design” as a part of the social problem-solving design in 2016. By breaking away from the conventional method of improving the physical environment and providing material support, the SMG attempted a new public policy to take care of mental health. The purpose is to lower stress faced in each life cycle and situation and bring healthy life to individuals and society by improving factors that hinder the mental health of citizens through design.

The Direction of the Design in The Age of New Normal ‘To Empathize with Costumers and Design New Connections through Design Thinking’

Due to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, social systems that operated through human connections fell into sudden stagnation. The free and flexible daily life of citizens was controlled and limited, and the operating speed of the existing system was significantly lowered, increasing the inconvenience and difficulties of citizens. In the midst of the COVID-19 crisis that no one expected and could not prepare for, members of society are showing some results by designing and implementing devices that can promote social connection in order to break through the disconnection and resulting inefficiency. It is necessary to think about the impact of these attempts on the lives of citizens and the sustainability of these connections.

Respond to the crisis, “Coronavirus reminder’ – from observation to action (Designing Safety Content That You Want to Keep It on Your Desk)

Corona Alert started at the end of January, not long after the outbreak of COVID 19, with the idea of ​​creating a service that can give a little help to society with the programming skills we learned. The members who developed 'Corona Alert' all gathered through the same programming conference. The team members who studied coding together at the conference and had experience in actually developing various services were working as developers of startups. I saw a lot of advertisements saying that such sites exist. We first analyzed several services already on the market. If it is similar to the previously released services, there is no significant meaning, so we considered the inconveniences and the direction of improvement for the existing services. In addition, we established the core value of the service by determining on what points we differentiate, and what value we can provide to users, beyond simply removing inconveniences.

Designing Safety Content That You Want to Keep It on Your Desk

It is no coincidence that when some major safety incident occurs is when most people take an interest in safety. When an individual pays particular attention to safety in daily life, it is because some accident or incident has motivated them to do so. While the type of content that can be easily accessed through smartphones is becoming more diverse and complete, it makes us wonder if the safety of our society is changing. It makes us wonder if safety measures are competitive. The Safety Design Research Institute ‘Osafe’ started from this question. “How can we keep people safe?” “Isn’t it possible to prevent unexpected safety accidents in advance? “ “If there is an unavoidable safety accident, what can be done to minimize the damage?” Osafe works based on a design methodology. In order to be chosen by modern people who live busy lives, we are working hard to produce and share safety content that can stand out, have fun, and form a consensus.

Generative Social Distance Design: The Optimisation of Building Layouts for COVID-19

Social Distancing Lab Project I would like to talk about the ‘Social Distance Research Institute’ project, which ended about three months ago. Former Senator Ted. Kennedy said, “What divides us pales in comparison to what unites us.” As I worked on a technical research project centered on isolating people during an epidemic, I personally hoped that the shared experience could revitalize the community and rekindle a sense of social cohesion. What is social distancing and how does it affect transmission? The prevailing view of the modern scientific community is that maintaining human-to-human distance is an important factor in reducing the rate of respiratory cross-contamination. The principle of air transmission is that droplets are emitted when people talk to each other or cough, and if people who are within 2 meters of each other inhale it, it is easy to be directly infected with the virus. Therefore, reducing the distance between people increases the risk of infection, and almost all countries have been able to directly reduce the number of deaths by introducing social distancing measures. These statistical data indicate that social distancing measures were effective in reducing the number of confirmed deaths, which is a result showing that social distancing is a key response to the spread of COVID-19. COVID-19 has had a huge impact on the global economy, not just on human life.

Social Problem Solving Design, Reinforcement of Resiliency Capacity Through Design

The COVID-19 pandemic is a crisis that no one has ever experienced. Existing social problems, such as economic recession, relative poverty, increased depression due to social isolation, and the intensification of suffering experienced by vulnerable groups such as infants, young children, the elderly, and the disabled, are being exacerbated by the pandemic. Medical staff and other members of society in various fields are making every effort to identify and deal with unpredictable situations in their respective positions, and the Seoul Metropolitan Government is also currently doing its best to overcome the Corona situation. We are now living in an era where problem-solving strategies are needed more than ever. There is an urgent need for a paradigm shift in policy to prevent and improve social problems that incur huge social costs, rather than reactive measures. Design is one of the main solutions to improve this, and it is a core competency and process that is already being used by many organizations and companies pursuing innovation as well as the public as a tool for solving problems. Through the social problem-solving design policy, the Seoul Metropolitan Government breaks away from the microscopic view of physical improvement and applies design to the overall municipal administration, designing a plan and process for problem-solving, and jointly solving it with various stakeholders. ‘Social resilience’ can be said to be the interaction between the vulnerability of a city and its resilience capacity. The vulnerability of a city is affected by many social problems inherent in the city, and the city's recovery capacity means the city's resources and systems that can overcome and solve these problems. Seoul Design wants to work together to increase the resilience of society so that our daily lives, which have been changed by non-contact, isolation, and social distancing, can be more closely connected.

The Process and Outcomes of the COVID-19 Design Challenge

Insights and Applications for the Post-Corona Era; The start of a design challenge related to COVID-19 Design has great power. Design has the power to motivate people to do many things, such as taking action, creating products and services that make life simple and rich, and deriving a whole new experience. Designers basically carry out design work assigned to their organizations, but in addition to these daily tasks, they have the power to solve the world's biggest problems. I expressed these ideas in the keynote speech last August at the Design for America Summit, where I urged designers to solve the biggest challenges facing the international community through a bold approach. And it wasn't long before the COVID-19 virus outbreak, which had effects worldwide. I thought that there must be a solution that designers can bring to meet the huge challenge of the Corona crisis. After discussing how we should contribute to this challenge by making a difference together with like-minded people like World Design Organization’s Srini Srinivasan and Rebecca Breuer and Liz Gerber of Design for America, we decided to launch the COVID-19 Design Challenge and bring the designer community together. Our starting point was to reach out to designers in each community and ask them what challenges they might face with COVID-19. Altogether, there were over 180 challenges, and they were recorded on Post-it notes and categorized according to themes. We grouped the related ones together and marked them on the priority grid in order of high impact and urgency, considering whether it is a task we need to address, what impact it will have, and whether it can affect urgency and resolution.

Considerations regarding healthy city after COVID-19

1. Statistical figures on the status of coronavirus outbreaks by city in Korea Since the first confirmed case of COVID-19 in South Korea on January 20, 2020, the coronavirus has spread rapidly in Korea, peaking on February 29, 2020. Since then, there has been a rapid re-spreading trend twice up to October, and the capital city, Seoul, has 53.13 confirmed cases per 100,000 population, the third highest number after Daegu and Gyeonggi-do.

The future of smart office, after COVID-19

The spread of the corona virus in 2020 has caused rapid changes in work patterns due to the normalization of working at home. Although there is a realistic limit to building a work environment with a specific concept in an unprepared situation, efforts are being made to respond to these changes in their own way, and each company needs time to compromise to create a safer work environment. It is time for designers to make efforts to find the interface between a space that harmoniously connects people and a space that prioritizes safety. Although it is necessary to change the philosophy of space itself, it is expected that human attempts to challenge the limits will continue.

Smart Home's Directions in Untact Society

Due to the contagiousness of the COVID-19 virus, the number of infected patients is increasing, and the resulting decline in social interactions is leading to a global economic crisis. Social distancing means that face-to-face contact with others is considered dangerous, and recommends staying at home as much as possible and refraining from outside activities such as going to work, eating out and shopping. The crisis of COVID-19, which is ongoing, is urging the transition to a non-face-to-face culture and society. Housing in the non-face-to-face society needs to be redefined with a new concept and function. Nowadays, when we think that a smart home can offer the possibility of an alternative, we understand it as a house that can provide convenience in our lives based on cutting-edge information and communication technology. However, this definition of a smart home is rather clichéd and indistinct, and I don't think it accurately describes the essence of a smart home. In the 1990s, there was already an intelligent home, and in the 2000s, the term ubiquitous home was used. In the 2010s, the smart home appeared, and they are all defined and used with almost the same concept. If the “homes” mentioned above have passed without becoming reality, can a smart home, which is being developed with the same concept, be an alternative in this era?

Designing the resilient post-pandemic city

As the world, which has achieved rapid urbanization, is struggling to adapt to extreme weather and the corona crisis, the question of whether cities can ensure the safety and well-being of all citizens has been put to a critical test. In the midst of today's high-impact change, urban planners, architects, policy makers and public health professionals all face the challenge of making cities more resilient. What is the city's resilience? In a narrow sense, resilience refers to the ability to return to its original form after some negative event or influence, that is, to restore its original position or form. However, the resilience of cities means more of a role for them than being a healthier place for their citizens to live and work. Resilient cities must have the ability to anticipate the future and adjust health-related systems and designs accordingly. Therefore, when the term resilience is applied in terms of a healthy city, it can be seen that various aspects are accompanied.

Reflections on Our Urban Design Efforts for the Post COVID-19 Era

In 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic is presenting new challenges to the world. According to the official statistics of the World Health Organization (WHO), there are currently 42,966,344 confirmed cases and 1,152,604 deaths in 219 countries and territories. In Korea, the cumulative number of confirmed cases has reached 26,043 and the death toll has reached 460. Although there are still many difficulties in our society, the response method to COVID-19 is receiving relatively positive evaluations. Quick epidemiological investigation, centralized administrative processing, and flexible financial management are frequently cited as the success factors of the so-called “K-Quarantine”. Planning and collaboration with the private sector, rigorous contact tracing, a flexible health system and government-led communication are key factors in controlling the coronavirus. The central government shows strong leadership and works closely with local governments and private organizations to carry out tasks quickly and efficiently. Our society and bureaucratic organizations are very accustomed to this, and perform effectively. This leads our city, which was built in a top-down, large-scale development method in an era of rapid growth, to reflect on recent urban design efforts that seek design solutions in a bottom-up, resident-participatory, small-scale regeneration method from a different angle. The so-called 'slow & bottom-up' discourse of 'step by step led by residents' in various similar project sites of the government that has changed names over the past 20 years was a very difficult investigation to realize. A number of projects such as living soc, smart city, and green remodeling are still being carried out rapidly under the leadership of the administration. As confirmed by the success factors of K-Quarantine, among the things our society is good at and can be proud of, is a quick and efficient administrative system led by the government and a fast space solution led by experts. What compromises must be sought to paradoxically establish a new, time-consuming, participatory urban design approach while taking advantage of the fast solution finding and implementation of the central government-led top-down system? The successful experience of K-Quarantine is something to be thankful for, but it is inevitable that attributes such as strong administrative power, promptness, control, and personal sacrifice collide with various basic values ​​such as democracy and human rights inherent in resident participatory urban design planning. How can you mediate such aspects? We try to find answers to these questions.

Post-COVID Era, Direction of Seoul Metropolitan Government’s Universal Design Policy

The global epidemic of COVID-19 is inducing major changes in our daily lives, and in all areas of society. Crisis has become commonplace, and with the transition to a non-face-to-face society, online communication methods have also become popular. Experts predict that this crisis will not end easily, and in particular, the transition to a non-face-to-face society will continue even after the coronavirus (post-corona). In Korea, various measures are being implemented, starting with “social distancing” to prevent and end COVID-19. As a result of everyone’s efforts, results are being achieved, but as social distancing continues, side effects are also appearing in some areas. In particular, for the socially disadvantaged such as the elderly and the disabled, social distancing and isolation from society can be as fatal as COVID-19. In this regard, changes in the public sector are required. It is necessary not only to strive for quarantine through social distancing, but also to alleviate the side effects that are different for each class of society and carefully examine the marginalized blind spots. This is why the role of universal design as “design that embraces all” at this point is important.

New Challenges in City Design to Post-COVID

At a time when the world is thinking about the form of cities to come after Corona, we need to think about how cities should be constructed from a more comprehensive perspective. In addition to the challenges triggered by the coronavirus, the problem of climate change, which must be approached from a particularly long-term perspective, is an area that cannot be prevented or treated, and is a topic that needs to be found through continuous problem-solving, dialogue, and discussion. How should we respond to the problem of climate change that all cities face in the future and must solve in the long term? We would like to discuss six issues on climate change to be announced at the 26th UN Climate Change Conference (COP26).

Impact Business Design for Social Ventures

Partner of starting social ventures, Sopoong When we face certain problems in our daily life or when social problems arise, the government solves them, or non-profit organizations and companies solve them. Someone has to pay attention to the problem and develop and disseminate a solution. Can the government do all this? Problems can be solved by institutions and policies, or they can be solved by products and services. It can be a public service, or it can be a product or service that needs to be paid for. I would like to think about the ‘company’, which is the entity that makes these products and services.