Fei Long

GEMZ - Your 1/4 life coach, media item 1

PROBLEM STATEMENT

GenZ in the early stages of their career lack working experience to understand & know their strengths, which can cause confusion when making decisions about their path.

DESIGN DIRECTION

How might we deliver a service for Genz to discover & develop their strengths in order to take control of their career & life.

GemZ empowers young people in the early stages of their careers to discover & develop their strengths over the long term.

By using a practical framework to gather feedback from others and sharing their quarter-life crisis stories in the community, they build self-awareness and take control of careers.

SIGN framework

GemZ uses the framework of ‘SIGN’ to record. There will be simple questions that help you to reflect on your daily achievements, then analyse your unique strengths.

Discovering your strengths is like digging the gem, you can polish your gems after applying your strengths in real life.

Peer feedback & Community

You can send others the questions and collect feedback.

Also, GemZ community will have advice on how to discover & develop strengths and help you connect with role models.

Long-term reflection

The platform will generate your report and 1/4 life story each month to help you better understand self.

You can share experiences in the community and not be alone to face your 1/4 life crisis.

Uncertainty is the new normal

Discover your unique strength

1/4 life crisis is a period of uncertainty, stress and deep soul-searching that many young people experience as they embark on a new chapter in life.

However. for our target gen-z. Their career path is no longer set and linear, but rather loops & turns.

In China, there will be over 10 million graduates in 2022. They need to face the uncertainty that their future jobs haven’t been invented yet, choosing a career not related to their major. Also, changing jobs more frequently, and getting ready to be re-skill anytime.

Covid has amplified the uncertainty, but also gave this generation time and space to reflect and ask human questions. Their jobs must have purposes and be meaningful to them.

By interviewing graduates and specialists like career coaches and hr people, we figured out the need of both employers and employees.

First, for our users, confusion often happens at the early stage of a career, when they lose confidence in their path or find themselves in an area that is not suitable for them.

Second, Gen-Z has more opportunities to explore different areas, but it may also cause more anxiety when seeing others' successes.

Third, to our surprise, a lot of them mentioned the same thing - even during this phase of ups and downs, having a sense of achievement can make them feel good about themselves and be more sure about their path.

So we plan to help Gen-Z discover their strengths, which also match their top consideration for their career -- to gain praise & recognition for good work.

Woomool - All emotions are valued, media item 1

Woomool - All emotions are valued, media item 2

Woomool - All emotions are valued, media item 3

Woomool - All emotions are valued, media item 4

PROBLEM STATEMENT

Emotional expressions is a crucial need identified by CYP, but they have poor ability of identifying and expressing emotions.

DESIGN DIRECTION

Woomool is a constructive channel for CYP to express themselves comfortably and effectively, thus rebuilding healthy communication with others.

*Collaborative project with Chenxian, Chuntian, Natasha, Xiaozhong, Ziwei Tang, NHSx

In 2022, I began to accept everything that happened, including the dark side which brought me infinite life force.

My project always focuses on the human’s exploration and expression of life, the behavioural motivation behind choices and the interpretation of their own destiny. I am obsessed with abstract things. My inspiration comes from my interest in astrology, psychology and literature. Design becomes my unique way to interact with the world.

Two years ago, I considered designers play the role of improving or creating better life experience for users. The practice in Royal College of Art made me realize that Service Design is not just about delivering the final solution, but also delivering the process.

The responsibilities of designers include communication and coordination with people, the ability to manage project progress in chaos, and effectively express outputs to different audiences.

I will bring these gifts into my future experience:

#Empathy. There is a limitation to get in touch with the 100% real needs of users, no matter how brilliant interview skills we have. The truth is not always clear, so we need to listen. Our brains are full of known voices and judgements, we can’t even understand our partners, parents or friends. Lack of empathy to ourselves and others will make us sensitive and furious.

#Problem-solving. We always mistakenly believe that the whole project process should be under control. The truth is some part of it may suddenly fall into chaos. Designers should be trained to know how to get back on track when things accidentally out of control, how to define the problems so as to create solutions.

#Clear Communication. Sometimes the discoveries are not concrete, but abstract. Human beings invented languages as the most sophisticated ways to communicate, but it is still imprecise. Design has taught me to use different media: sound, images, illustrations, diagrams, maps, etc. to make audiences as clear as possible what I want to express and give correct feedback.

When looking back my final project, I found that I have expressed nothing but my own prejudice.

My practice in RCA started with Critical Historical Studies, my thesis is about how Tarot can answer the questions raised by our inner self. However, I found that no matter how conscious we are, we are always limited by our own historical, social and cultural backgrounds, which has a subversive impact on my future user research.

I continued my research on this subject at AcrossRCA, I invited people from MA Contemporary Art Practice/Animation/Painting/Photography/Textiles/Jewellery/Information Experience Design, MRes Communication Design to share the artistic and scientific ways they used to talk and connect with inner-self, many of the results are still fresh in my memory.

I have completed 4 main projects during studying here.

WelHome. The first project was about how to provide better home care services for future care workers. We found that the key wasn't about the job itself, but about people. Care workers need more sense of identity than efficiency. I got to know good teammates, who taught me a lot of project methods and affirmed my ability to summarise and ideation.

WooMool. Collaborated with NHS to provide mental health services for CYP in the UK. We defined mental health as the capability to bounce back from life challenges and provided step-by-step guidance to encourage teenagers to express their emotions. We have a very creative and responsible team, and everyone's advantages are brought into full play.

Dr.O. We provided service to encourage the transformation into the era of electric vehicles in the UK by establishing correct cognition and cultivating people’s charging habits to enhance participation. In this project, I challenged my ability in decision-making, so as to better manage the project and coordinate the team.

GEMZ. I'm very excited that the last project can express and explore the greatest fear and confusion of the younger generation, helping Gen-Z see their value in the moment of life crisis. To be honest, this project challenged my knowledge of service design, and made me see that prototyping and iteration are more important than perfect delivery.

Besides my studies, extensive social practice is also the source of my continuous progress. Participating in activities such as hackathons with Imperial College London and London Business School broadened my knowledge of technology and business. In cooperation with people from different disciplines, I saw the value and importance of design in other fields.

Royal College of Art is committed to bringing the impact of design to the world with cutting-edge thinking and practice. I have participated in the delivery of courses with the innovation education team, providing help and support to teachers, students and entrepreneurs in universities and art institutions, both UK and China, making the best effort to inspire more people who are curious and excited about the design world.

Fei Long

PROBLEM STATEMENT

DESIGN DIRECTION

PROBLEM STATEMENT

DESIGN DIRECTION

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Royal College of Art