Project Context
Re:MAKE is a community platform for active and passionate individuals, teams and organisations re-imagining and re-inventing a better future for humanity.
Re:MAKE started as an initiative by MAKE Studios, a Hong Kong-based service design and innovation agency specialising in design thinking and building resilient businesses. The purpose of this project is to develop and engage a global community of social innovators and change-makers to re-invent new contexts, artifacts and systems to serve a desirable, shared future.
My contribution
I collaborated with Patti Hunt, Kate Okrasinski, Wai-Jing Man, Calvin Lo, Ada Sin and Jenny Lim to conceptualise, organise and build this platform. My role as a service designer was to develop a website with product designer Hanny Yeung, co-organise two community events and drive our community platform on Mighty Networks.
Our partners
We worked with ambitious individuals and teams striving to drive change in challenging environments. Multiple stakeholders and experts in design, innovation and social impact participated like Adam Lawrence, Bec Scott, Elber Or, Lin Shu Fen and Raiyo Nariman, to name a few.
Our impact
After one year of work and development, re:MAKE has connected with more than 150 active individuals, partnered with more than ten prestigious organisations across APAC, and successfully held three community events.
Challenges
The genesis: working remotely
After finishing my master’s thesis at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University in January 2020, I was in Mexico for a holiday to visit my family. Due to COVID-19, Hong Kong closed its border to international flights in March. The immigration tower did not receive any documentation for visa applications either. Hence, I could not travel back to Hong Kong. My collaboration with MAKE Studios started remotely in April 2020; we called the project Jamplex in its origin.
Early in the pandemic, everyone moved online; we used Zoom and Miro to collaborate and jam on the initial ideas of the project. Communication was fluid, but engaging fully was challenging due to our time-zone differences and other professional endeavours.
Our conversations in the early days were about our intention and the reason for being. These are some of the boards we created to plan and formulate the platform's purpose and framework.
Purpose
Exploring an unknown space in APAC
After some weeks of collaboration, discussions and workshops, we defined the original purpose of the project:
After three months in the project, we consolidated our ideas into a community platform; we evolved Jamplex to brand it as re:MAKE. Re- is a prefix with the meaning again, back, or it indicates repetition.
Re:MAKE sought to unite the collective around the action, agency and urgency needed to start building a new, better normal. We sought to partner with people, institutions, government bodies and communities to re-invent context-specific artifacts and systems to serve a desirable environment.
We borrowed many ideas from futures thinking, speculative design, and foresight to develop a framework to re-shape multiple futures through our research.
Reinvention Framework
Branding Process
Our next steps were to consolidate the branding elements for re:MAKE which would help us build new artifacts and encourage trust with other potential partners and clients. As for me, I finally managed to get back to Hong Kong in July 2020 and started collaborating face-to-face with the studio.
Brand development
Our goal was to develop a strong brand with the flexibility to use visual assets for multiple marketing purposes. At the same time, we developed different templates for social media and our community platform, Mighty Networks.
Getting the community's 'buy-in.'
To get the project off the ground, we partner with different Hong Kong and South-East Asia communities with a similar purpose; Audacities, UXPH and SVPHK, to name a few. At the same time, we connected with other influential individuals doing unique projects for social innovation in their countries.
To consolidate re:MAKE as a brand, we organised and hosted our first community event called re:2020; the event was initially planned to be face-to-face. Yet, due to the rising restriction in October 2020, we decided to host the event remotely. This new challenge made us transition all our assets and plans to online platforms; we used Zoom and MURAL.
At the same time, we designed and developed a website to communicate to our audience about coming events and our roadmap to reinvention.
Website development
Our main goal with the website was to generate conversions to join our community platform. We also offered the programme of upcoming events and showcased previous conferences and speakers that collaborated with MAKE Studios.
The website generated traction to Mighty Networks and helped us sell all tickets for re:2020. The following screens are part of our UX process and UI development.
To explore the re:MAKE website please click here.
Community Events
re:2020
re:2020 was a two-day online event; we hosted 80 participants and introduced our reinvention framework. Day 1 featured a host of speakers from across the Asia Pacific, case studies, interactive activities and networking games to get everyone inspired and connected to our core themes.
re:IMAGINE
Our second event from our programme was a community-driven exploration of one of the topics selected from re:2020 - Work culture.
The exploration and prototyping phase to develop community engagement for this new event motivated me to start Sharing for Impact. This initiative sought to co-design immersive experiences to trigger introspection and boost self-expression through art and engaging discussions. The learnings from these experiences connected us with crucial stakeholders essential for re:IMAGINE. If you wish to know more about this similar project, please click on this link.
Re:IMAGINE was a 1-day workshop that explored mental wellbeing at work through empathy. This event took place in March 2021. Luckily, we could host the event in person thanks to our partnering venue, The Desk. Due to the continuous restrictions, we could only take a small number of participants; nevertheless, the results were outstanding.
These are some of the Insight Cards and What if questions emerged from the workshop:
Later, we voted for the most exciting areas to explore and define what would be easy to spark that is true today and what would be hard to spark that is not true today.
We selected 13 How Might We questions from this analysis that will push our community to continue ideating ways to improve mental wellbeing in the working space.
Event outputs
Lastly, we found six ways to take action to improve your workforce's mental wellbeing immediately.
Things to do:
• Set a positive example
• Don't outsource to partners or human resources
• Foster latent support systems
Things to try:
• Create distributed teams with budget and authority
• Engage with governments
• Connect with education
Outcomes & Lessons
Powered by the community
One of the critical lessons for this project's strategy was to select the right tools to incentivise interaction between the community members in COVID times. Remote collaboration was the name of the game. Adapting to the circumstances and world scenario made us transition our frameworks and methodologies to platforms like Zoom, Miro, Mural and Mighty Networks.
We championed a resilient mindset, leveraged teamwork and embraced the community. Participatory design is the foundation of re:MAKE and a must in any co-creative process. Through our online and offline events, we realised that it's possible to change human behaviour with the right provocations. We will continue shifting trajectories to futures we can conceptualise, design and crystallise.
Key Insights from the project
• Mental stamina is a 21st-century skill to keep a flow-state in our daily challenges.
• Every project starts with a purpose challenged by a complex question. Find support from other minds; the power of co-creation and cross-disciplinary teams creates exceptional solutions.
• Learning something new is scary until you make it an adventure. Enjoy the process and make the best of it.
• Lean into change. Use the moments of disruption to catalyse a new opportunity.
• Good design creates seamless optimal experiences for all living species. Period.
Conclusion
The starting purpose of this project was to explore different design practices and possibilities for designers to develop systemic change. We aligned our initial design principles with the outputs and outcomes of our events; we enabled new connections through creativity and cross-disciplinary practices. At the same time, the community contributed to discussing and proposing solutions to complex problems like education systems, work culture, and consuming behaviour.
re:MAKE is a community that is still going and growing; if you wish to join, please click on this link and share your story and why you want to make a change in this world. Starting with the individual is the only way to create sustained impact as a collective.
