The entrepreneurial assistance and design project for Mica Art Space marked my first foray into the creation of a small cultural enterprise from scratch, alongside a small group of individuals.

The project is a product affiliated with an event curation company, Mica Art Space, a cultural venue located in a half-century-old building on Pucheng Street in Taipei. The decision to select this particular space was made because one of the founders had a background in architecture and recognized the excellent lighting, ventilation, and numerous slender pillars, which allowed for the creation of an unencumbered natural environment.

Additionally, one of the founders saw the entire space (which was still in its nascent stage) as a crystallization of a mineral, encompassing and overlapping the remnants of different temporal and spatial contexts. Thus, people who visit this space are naturally drawn to its resonant qualities and are likely to leave their own imprint behind. Given the many possibilities for operating this space in the future, it was decided that it would serve as an experimental laboratory for various fields, allowing proprietors, brands, organizations, artists, performers, and creators to interact with the space in diverse ways, thereby generating cultural exchange and collision.

I have applied my knowledge in the digital realm and used UX design thinking to help create this product for the organization for the past two years. Due to the diversity of our team members' backgrounds, we were able to generate many interesting ideas and perspectives. For example, I take the concept of "micro-interactions" from product design theory and suggest that art spaces also possess this quality. According to my research on online reviews, users subconsciously tend to view art spaces as a restaurant/coffee shop or another place to eat. When the space tries to increase its income by selling food and drinks, users tend to forget that it is an art space by its nature and they tend to review this space by focusing on the quality of service of the food and drinks and give quite direct and harsh judgments.

Therefore, every object in the space should have communicative and interactive properties, and the user’s overall experience of the art space should include all elements of the space ( including traits of the participants and collaborative artists using this space, and even the culture of the local art community.)

Obviously, integrating a digital product design mindset into the workflow and establishing a culture of physical space is not an easy task. All members of the organization have creative and cultural backgrounds, but the use of new methods and value judgments raises many cost-effectiveness issues and is subject to debate about personal values ​​as well as the fair measures that can be used to evaluate effectiveness.

This is a long process that requires continuous hypothesis testing, feedback gathering, business model adaptation, and service optimization for validation. At this stage, the tangible value I can bring for organizational decision-makers is to help broaden their thinking to include the overall environmental state of the space, to look for new entrances and generate market segmentation through design details, and to organize members of your organization around a shared perspective of the space and a tangible picture of their customers. All in all, design thinking serves as an important bridge between communication and operations within an organization.