Heng Yao

As the beating hearts of local communities, our high streets are declining that with a record 16 per cent of shops across the country are standing empty for longer caused by many complex and historic reasons, and there will be no “return to normal”. So it is the time to reimagine how high streets work to allow local people to take over, to truly meet local needs and serve their communities.

Light Up space is divided into three parts: project show, pop up space and idea collection. It is run by full time volunteers and local business coaches as part of a wider support network.

The vacancy and decline of the high street have brought a series of financial and social problems, and the transformation of the high street is imminent. Light Up is a community engagement service that aims to break down barriers to local people in high street development and contribute to the achievement of community-led high streets. Through an incubator cafe with pop up space for community driven businesses, it help build community connection and trust, integrates favorable resources, optimizes the entrepreneurial environment and promotes the emergence of local businesses, bringing together locals and entrepreneurs to revitalize their high streets.

Findi is a 1-year long employee benefit cum financial service that helps young people to start saving money at a pivotal moment in their lives, i.e. when they start working. It aims to help build healthy savings behaviours that can become the backbone of a healthy financial life.

Findi uses 4 distinct direct/indirect feedback mechanisms: 1. It uses notifications as a signal of warning before going over budget; 2. A review and analysis page helps users reflect on what expenses could be avoided and identify emotions that might be linked to them; 3. A behaviour change graph is a subtle indication of how one's spending/saving behaviours are changing over time; 4. A 'level of security' bar indicates a long term financial roadmap and encourages them to stay on track.

FINDI is a financial service with a twist: one that's funded and provided by trusted employers, empowered by charities and local institutions but owned by and made for young adults starting their first full time jobs. Our service design team at RCA, dived deep into behaviours that impend people from taking good decisions about their money, saving their income and moving up the financial ladder. We went back to the basics to slowly set the right behaviours by combining principles of behaviour economics with the power of human-centred service design, empowered by the easy of tech. In addition! we decided to intervene at a pivotal moment in their lives when, young adults who never sustainable saved before could start doing so once and for all. This way we hit all the nodes of behaviour change i.e. opportunity, motivation and capability.

Heng Yao

I am a Product and Service designer. And also an observer.

I always have passion in observe everything around me and always think about how improve those. Supply it if there is something missing, and improve it if there is backward.

Dig it and Change it if there is some transparent cause.

Heng Yao

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Royal College of Art