Hangzhou CBD

Downtown Hangzhou is a series of long shopping streets that seem to be always populated and bustling. Although it has its share of restaurants and other food vendors, most shops are fashion or sports goods in this area.

At the south of the main CBD, there is a traditional street (Hefang Jie) that sells a lot of old wares and has some famous tea houses. Further north and closer to the lake, there is a more expensive area that has some of the better brands as well as more restaurants and hangout spots. There are clubs and other night culture venues throughout the central city, although we did not go to these much as ZJU students were rarely interested in them. As well as stores, they had what people called 'the markets' which are enclosed alleyways in some building that were full of tiny shops and often very crowded. Many of these would extend under the ground a few floors and above ground 5 or 6 floors. They would be full of many kinds of fashion products and accessories and bargaining is expected. The target market is generally girls under twenty five; however, most of the larger facilities catered for a larger demographic.

Throughout my stay I often walked through the central streets of the city to go shopping or to find a new restaurant. However, most things available did not suit or fit appropriately. For obvious reasons, shoes that fit me are not common in China. However, while I was there, I did find some that were too big and I eventually bought a pair in the CBD, although they have proved to not be too comfortable. I think they have culture on their side because they need not create fitting options for more than a few races of Chinese.

Red Dot 2006

This was an effort that the Creative group (and later some other ZJU competition teams) put towards the 2006 Red Dot Concept Award competition. This competition is open so we spent a lot of time looking for a good approach.

My role on this project was as an innovation team member. During the course of the project I did a few specific things for the team including a few "Getting Out of the Box" sessions and another "Looking for Need" workshop. Details on these are below:

1. "Getting Out of the Box" sessions: These were a number of occasions designed to press some of the importance of leaving the lab and seeing more of the world to get more informed design outcomes. We walked around some areas of Hangzhou for quite some time, documenting human behavior and looking for weak signals and discussing design needs that we were seeing or experiencing.
2. "Looking for Need" workshop: This was a workshop where we discussed finding the need behind a design and finding a need before creating design. The goal was to start to introduce some of areas of interest for our Red Dot submission to find some problems that were not too big to tackle.
   

I was not part of the finishing team because by the due date of this project the Creative Group had dissolved and I had been moved into Lab 318. I was then busy with other projects and a new team was created to finish up the Red Dot submissions.

I was only really involved in this project for a few weeks but during that time I became a lot more confident that I had something valuable to offer others and I became a lot more able to speak publicly and without prompts. I think I also learnt about managing group projects and working towards a team ideal a little better. These things mentioned, I think I learnt more by watching the other student's approch to the project than by my own experience. They worked so much harder and did so much more contextualizing research than any other group of designers or design students I had ever worked with. I got the impression that they were really interested in their work and they they were really interested in winning. I found out later that this paid off.

Freelance Quality Control

For a few months I worked as a freelance quality control consultant for an American start up called BoomYa Inc. Eugene, a friend of mine from early in my stay in China, was associated with this business and needed some help appraising manufacturers and designs and things like that.

My role was as an contracted consultant and in meetings I would always introduce myself as a QC person although the actual work I did for the company also involved some design consulting. My involvement included working on the following tasks:

1. Visiting many manufacturers with a company representative and later with the owner with an aim to come to a manufacturing agreement and establish an understanding of the expected and required quality standards;
2. Assessing manufacturing facilities and methods to aid development of a production pipeline;
   
3. Addressing quality issues in production lines of future products;
4. Offering design consulting to optimize product cost efficiency and marketability.

This project was a great experience for me in many ways. I learnt a huge amount not only about working with companies and meeting their expectations but also about how people in this context are lenient in certain ways that one may not expect. I was continually amazed by how much simple things that I knew could be useful to other people. Information that I thought was common in an industry setting became decision changing on a number of occasions which was an interesting responsibility.

As well as the working experience I was exposed to some of the innovation common to Chinese manufacturers including making EDMs out of old end mills and some of their ingenious ways of carrying large payloads on bicycles.

I also realized that presenting and communicating well makes a huge difference. During one meeting I quickly mocked up a Maya model to demonstrate how we wanted a part made and the manufacturers thought this was the best thing since fried rice. My model was simple and but it served in ways that no sketch or words could have.

Toward the end of my work for this company I was asked to make a judgment call that may have destroyed the future of the company. I thought for awhile and eventually came up with an answer but I was really reluctant to do so because I was relatively nervous that my lack of experience would cause a long term problem or bankruptcy. In the end it seems to have turned out fine. The company has not yet gone into full production as they are having some issues their engineering department in the States.

Scaffolding and Building

Animals have a big role in building construction, especially when it is in a less easy to reach place like this mountain top.

In China, construction is fast and uses a lot of methods which are not commonly seen in the West. Bamboo is often used for scaffolding in a number of ways and, because most of the builder are very used to this tradition, when they use metal, they use it as if it were bamboo. So in the making of new buildings they often seem to create a compete shell out of long metal rods, about the size of the bamboo that would be used, all bolted together. As the building grows, the structure remains and is used as a transport system and holding structure. Then at the last minute, when the building is complete, they deconstruct the shell to reveal the new building. They still use bamboo a lot as well as traditional techniques to get fast production on a small budget.

Only rarely do they use elements that are much stronger than these metal rods, so when doing things like a new bridge - where there would usually be a huge need for load bearing support structures - they just bolt thousands of these poles together to create a connected 3D matrix. That means that the bridge is supported by essentially solid metal below its surface. This method is quite safe as it makes it much less likely that the bridge will fall while in construction, but it is resource intensive and time consuming. However, this is not a problem for the construction managers because in China, there are always people eager to work at jobs like this so they can easily find good employees. As a result, the workflow of the construction site is much quicker and tighter paced. They also have a tendency to work all the time, as opposed to Western construction companies who are likely to stop if it rains or if the wind is not blowing to their liking. Similarly, there are no problems with unions. Instead, there are government organisations and there are certain rights to walk away from things that people are not interested in taking part in. In the end, it seems hugely more efficient than the Western methods and in general better for a larger percentage of the population.