Studio: Service Design and Urban Needs
In this Urban Technology studio (UT 360), juniors engaged in an innovative collaboration with Let’s Grow Michigan and the Michigan Economic Development Corp. to unveil projects that featured service concepts to ease and enhance the “onboarding experience” of new Michiganders. The outputs of the course were three design concepts that proposed new ways in which Michigan might tout cultural heritage diversity, better use disused spaces in towns and cities and celebrate the unique qualities of its midsized cities.
WorldWide MI is a culturally curated service for discovering and connecting communities in Michigan. Through research, the students found there is an underserved need for new Michiganders trying to connect with locals and find a sense of belonging. However, existing onboarding services are fragmented or are purely administrative. Worldwide MI addresses this need by enabling people to have culturally relevant experiences, allowing them to discover locales parallel to their past and evoke nostalgia and emotional connection, leading them to form genuine connections through those shared experiences.
The service also provides indirect benefits to various stakeholders. It empowers established businesses and communities as cultural nexuses that are at the center of curation. Broader awareness of the cultural backgrounds of local businesses could mean new customers for those businesses, tighter social cohesion through organic and informal interactions, and ultimately greater community building and retention rates.
Students
Ting Fong Chen, Enzo Mignano, Theo Berry, Audrey Tang, Devin Vowels