Overseas Social Innovation Project
The project was in partial fulfillment of the Social Innovation Project module at Singapore Polytechnic (SP). As one of the project leads, I helped to use design thinking to promote tourism at Kampong Chhnang with a multidisciplinary team and students from the National University of Management (NUM), Cambodia.
Problem statement: How can we improve tourism in Kampong Chhnang?
Role
UX Research
Prototyping
Team
A multi-disciplinary team of nine from SP (e.g. engineering)
Client
Kampong Chhnang
(Potential)
Year
2018
(2 weeks)
User Research
Conducted face to face in-depth user interviews with 5 villagers and did natural shadowing of them for 2 days during a homestay at the village. The team was assigned to two families by NUM. The NUM students helped translate our questions and their answers while we voice recorded. The interviews were transcribed later on.
Solution
Data clustering was used to derive insights and three needs. (in following sections) Then, a persona was made, along with the problem statement: How can we improve tourism in Kampong Chhnang?
Persona
A floor plan was put together to make the village more accessible and attractive to the public while taking the village’s culture into consideration. A prototype and budget were created to ensure that the idea would be feasible and sustainable. The solutions were iterated after one co-creation session with the villagers and NUM faculty.
Prototype
Budget
01 External Support
User Research
The locals are disconnected from the outside world and can barely make ends meet with their current jobs. For example, one villager sold a whole bottle of palm juice to our Cambodian teacher-in-charge for only USD $0.25. It takes a whole day of work to get that amount of juice since the juice trickles out of the tree very slowly. The locals were surprised to find out that amount can easily cost more than $5 in Singapore.
Insight & Need 1
Insight & Need 2
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Solution with co-creation
To reduce dependence on external sources of advertisement and to create new jobs, we recommended a fruit farm, museum, tours for hiking and a petting farm.
02 Increase Awareness
Insight & Need 3
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User Research
Tourists also do not thoroughly explore the village when they visit, since there are no directions provided so most of them only walk through a few lanes at the entrance of the village before leaving. This contributes to there being unequal opportunities for the villagers located deeper in the village to sell their products and interact with those from outside the village.
Solution
To provide equal chances of selling their wares, we recommended including signboards in English and Khmer, toilets, restaurants and a central market in the village.
User Research
Tourists do not know much about the village. The tourists that were interviewed said that they only found out about the village through books in France, not through the more main stream forms of advertising. Many tourists do not even pass through the village as tuk tuk drivers have been tipped to recommend tourists to visit other villages.
Solution with co-creation
Hence, a community centre and village homestays were recommended.
My Learnings
1. Writing down the goal of each task at hand and checking how the team has interpreted it facilitates more targeted ideation. (e.g. pasting a sticky note with the problem statement at the top of the whiteboard)
2. Raising one's hand in big group discussions is a good way to get everyone's attention and helps me retain my train of thought better.