Now | Vol.11 — Let’s Enjoy Your Discovery!

Now Vol.11

Let’s Enjoy Your Discovery!

Joy of Discovery

CAVEHOUSE, October 12, 2023

Credits

Words

Peter Lee

Filming

Salt Studio

A quick three-line summary

“Joy of Discovery,” an immersive workshop, was held to rediscover Kia Global Design members’ identities, roles, and values.

Throughout the workshop, it was awe-inspiring to see participants sparkling with ideas, stimulating each other, and building positive relationships.

The workshop demonstrated Kia Global Design’s extraordinary willingness to understand its designers from their point of view, consider how they can continue with their creative thinking, and promote their values.

In June 2023, I was approached by the Kia Global Design Division (hereinafter Kia Design) to organize a workshop that would revitalize their organization. Automotive design is a process where many designers collaborate to complete a product, so the organization tends to take precedence over individual designer credits. That is especially true for designers who joined the company with great ambition and motivation yet could still use a boost of momentum to reset themselves after three to five years of such immersive design work. The key was to design a customized one-day workshop to recharge their creative batteries. After carefully asking them what they wanted to do during the workshop, I narrowed it down to a few things.

- A time to reflect on and reestablish one’s individual identity, something they may have forgotten while immersed in their collaborative activities

- An opportunity to think about branding themselves as a member of an organization and as an individual creator, as well as to think about themselves

- A chance to have new conversations with different people and to be able to voice their internal concerns fully

- A moment to recognize one’s role, importance, and value in the organization and to produce meaningful results

Kia Design’s sentences, filled with words that needed to be underlined, contained the organization’s sincere desire to help its members. In particular, it was clear that as an organization that collectively harnesses the inspiration of so many people to produce results under Kia’s design philosophy, “Opposites United,” it still cares about the identity and branding of each designer—which becomes the organizational foundation—and tries to continue communicating with them on an ongoing basis. I thought we could create an exciting opportunity that would benefit both the organization and the individuals themselves by leveraging NOLGONG’s extraordinary ability to conduct immersive workshops based on game design.

Pale Blue Dot, 2020 (1990 image corrected) © NASA/JPL-Caltech

An image suddenly popped into my head, sent back by the Voyager 1 space probe on February 14, 1990, when the spacecraft was billions of miles from Earth. There was a tiny blue dot in that image. Later referred to as “The Pale Blue Dot” by the American astronomer Carl Sagan, we know this pale little dot, which is 6.4 billion kilometers away.

While thinking of the English word “dot” and the same word in Korean, I came up with many sentences containing one of its synonyms, “point.” When I further considered those sentences, I thought of, one by one, the emotions I felt from the pale blue dot and the feelings that the members of Kia Design must have felt before our workshop overlapped and left a lasting impression on me. My thoughts and the sentences I had come up with all intertwined with each other and gave me poetic inspiration. Before I knew it, a short poem was born. The poem, which had no title and was a mixture of English and Korean lines, summarized my hope that the designers attending the workshop could define the objects they encounter in their work and daily lives from their own perspective.

The Point
작은 점
나를 찾아 떠나는 여행
Get to the Point
당신을 초대합니다
That’s beside the Point
때로는 소외되고
You’re missing the Point
때로는 잊혀지고
The Point is lost on them
때로는 잃어버리기도 하며
Prove your Point
때로는 증명해야 하고
Get to the Point
때로는 찾아가야 하지만,
That’s a good Point
당신은 소중하며
The point is worth considering
충분한 가치를 가지고 있습니다
그리고,
무엇보다
The Point is clear
확실합니다
I see your Point
나는 당신이 보입니다
Let’s Make Your Point.

Instead of preparing a formal introductory briefing for the workshop, I met with Kia Design representatives with the poem. Through a mutual understanding of the context, we developed specific details for the workshop. It was fascinating to see that the aspects Kia Design emphasized—such as holding the workshop in an unfamiliar place outside the company, having a participatory and immersive format, and providing entirely new experiences—were similar to the essence of the workshop that NOLGONG emphasizes.

We decided that the title of the workshop would be “Joy of Discovery.” I wanted all the participants to experience the joy of discovery as they dig deeper within themselves and piece together who they are as designers and what they mean to the company. The benefits of an immersive workshop are that the more engaged you are, the more effectively you can not only absorb the workshop’s message but also take the experience with you and apply it to your daily life. That is where game design is effective in many ways because you get to experience how your proposed design moves and connects people before implementing anything in real life. As a result, we worked on the design of the workshop based on the Tinkering Academy Workshop model, which uses everyday objects to create games. At the same time, we also used a wide array of immersive experience designs. While encouraging designers to participate actively, we focused on creating a starting point for designers to rethink their professional identity, roles, and values.

At dawn on the day of the workshop on October 12, I headed over to CAVEHOUSE in Itaewon, the venue for the event, to start welcoming guests. CAVEHOUSE is located on the main street in Itaewon, but when you see the entrance, you think, “Is this the right place?” Once inside, however, you know it is a charming venue with an unexpectedly ample yet cozy space. At 9 a.m., the stars of the day (i.e., Kia’ Designers) began arriving. Mostly, people working at the same company usually have similar tendencies, but interestingly, these people all had their own strong personalities. After checking out the space, participants grabbed a pre-packaged drink and bagels from a local Itaewon store and settled in. Although it is often the case that people do not even bother to introduce themselves at large workshops, thankfully, participants on this day seemed to enjoy introducing themselves. Even if it was the first time they were saying hello and conversing, many welcomed one another by saying things like, “Oh, I’ve seen you in passing before.” Each seemed to positively exude the feeling that they are all part of Kia Design.

The morning workshop finally began. The goal of the first program, called “Tinker Our Ways,” was to make participants work in teams to design games with everyday objects. One of the best parts of game design is physically engaging the players in the game, so it must have been a special moment for the participants to enjoy the dynamic experience of using their bodies by personally joining the games created by different teams. To actually make the game, you need materials. Each team opened their mystery envelope to reveal linen string, ping pong balls, paper plates, brooms, dustpans, a scoop net, cable ties, back scratchers, scouring pads, rubber bands, yarn, balloons, beach balls, plastic string, paper cups, and marble balls. When identifying and utilizing these materials to make a game, most people do not know what to do with them. However, Kia people quickly touched the objects, connected them, and put their thoughts together to create a game. Although it was likely their first time doing such an activity, they quickly expressed their observations, ideas, and creative abilities as designers and exuded tremendous energy.

We decided to pick familiar fairy tales and use them as the narratives for games, which ended up being Rapunzel, Hansel and Gretel, The Honest Woodman, Jack and the Beanstalk, and The Three Little Pigs. As I watched in anticipation to see what whimsical interpretations they would come up with, I was surprised to see a high level of concentration and activeness on the part of the participants—they checked out the tools and immediately created something that was almost a sculpture before installing it in a large space. They then discussed activities involving minimal movement at the table for a long time or got up from their chairs and experimented with objects to develop ideas through physical movements. Above all, the ability to organize and express their games in the event space according to the narrative of each fairy tale was truly remarkable.

Each team completed their game in different ways. Inspired by Rapunzel’s long hair, one team devised a fun idea of wrapping a piece of plastic string around a person’s forehead and attaching a beach ball to the end of the string, which touched the scoreboard on the floor. Another team made a game where players picked up the rubber bands Hansel and Gretel spilled on the floor utilizing sabangchigi (a traditional Korean game). Another team connected a back scratcher and a broom to make a gold and silver axe, and then people collected the cable ties scattered on the floor in a dustpan and put them in a scoop net on the opposite side. Yet another team constructed a long beanstalk out of linen string and paper plates and then threw ping-pong balls to land on the plates in each section. Finally, one other team stacked cups to make houses for the three little pigs and formed a paper shield in front of them to keep the wolf from throwing marble balls at them.

Watching them communicate their messages clearly and design in a way that others could easily understand, it was clear that they intuitively knew how to design a game without any specific knowledge of game design. This is probably due to the on-the-job training for designers that they received in the past. Most importantly, they were able to fully apply their own rules to the game, which must have given them great pleasure in expressing their own personalities and accomplishments. When it came time for the festival, when everyone turned into players, there was indescribable excitement everywhere. It was like watching the most fabulous festival ever for designers, where the games, which encapsulated the diverse creative abilities of Kia designers, were made to shine even brighter by their own enjoyment.

In the afternoon, we organized a deconstructive creation workshop called “Answers Within.” Deconstructive creation is also known as “reverse create” and “opposite create” because it is the opposite approach to the act of creating, which aims to complete an entire object. In the process of deconstruction, the goal is to identify the small pieces that make up the whole and their meanings and to recreate the exhibit as a subjective creator by giving it various contexts and meanings based on their own perspectives. For Kia designers, all of whom have been working endlessly to complete one huge project at a time, this is an excellent opportunity to think about their personal identity and branding. The deconstructive creation workshop continues after the act of dismantling things. Indeed, it also involves asking yourself questions, establishing the messages you want to convey, and sharing your artworks based on them with others through titles and descriptions. The diversity of the workshop participants was nothing short of brilliant during the final presentation of their works, as they managed to capture their innermost feelings and thoughts successfully.

The program was intimidating, even at a glance, but the participants were still very motivated and open to new activities. The spectrum of materials that could be disassembled was surprisingly broad and included

- Complex IT products, such as a keyboard, electronic dictionary, cell phone, calculator, simultaneous interpretation equipment, and a floppy disk
- Items with precise functions, such as a corded phone, pencil sharpener, portable fan, glue gun, COVID-19 self-test kit, BRITA filter, shower filter, desk clock, and soap bubble maker
- Simple objects, such as a toy, doll, and baseball
- Natural objects include tangerines, globe amaranths, ground cherries, and perilla buds.

As we set up the lab-like desk lighting and various disassembly tools to enhance the mood for the activity, the Kia Designers’ personalities shone through. Some were very calm and careful, dismantling each piece one by one, while others were cool and straightforward, cutting their object with a saw.

It was thrilling to witness the activities of these designers, which included creating specific messages with deconstructed keyboard buttons and sentimentally expressing the difficulty of communication using the delete and enter buttons, gathering countless grains of sediment from a BRITA filter and transforming them into a national flag; imagining the texture inside a glue gun as an intriguing dessert; pulling out the four wires hidden in a telephone cord to demonstrate that conversation and understanding requires a range of efforts; reflecting on how the presence or absence of a tiny element can affect a bubble maker’s function to enable a sparkling journey of bubbles; and communicating about a topic that has been on one’s mind as they dismantled a sturdy baseball cowhide covering only to find an even sturdier cushioned cork pill on the inside.

Designers respectively showed the sensitivity to question which is more beautiful by depicting the situation of a single globe amaranth scattering and becoming a bouquet; the courage to question the situation of achieving order but not functioning after sawing part of a portable fan (that could not stand on its own) and standing it on a piece of paper in line with the phrase, “Order is good, convenient, and beautiful”; the thoughtfulness of dismantling a doll that guarded a child’s sleeping quarters to give it the freedom to float in the clouds; and the questioning of what are the real dreams that cannot be calculated through a calculator when we are so wrapped up in money and numbers. As such, the perspective and depth of their works as individual creators were terrific!

In particular, I could see that everyone was interested in introducing each other’s work and listened intently to what kind of work it was and what it was about. At the same time, I could also feel their genuine respect and interest in each other. A designer confessed that he was influenced by a philosophical work and explanation by a colleague and immediately came to rethink his own work before reorganizing his work description as a result of the inspiration. That scene exemplified the desire and determination unique to designers. I got an impression from this workshop: Kia Design is an organization where brilliant creators stimulate each other and build positive relationships.

After completing all the programs, the much-anticipated workshop ended with a catered after-party featuring DJing. Every workshop we conduct ends with a questionnaire. As I excitedly skimmed through the satisfaction ratings and short comments, I quickly learned that Joy of Discovery earned a rating of 4.96 out of 5. Some of the detailed comments participants wrote down included the following:

- I liked using a different set of brain muscles from my usual work.
- The content is age-appropriate and current. The thought-provoking activities and out-of-the-box experiences were impressive.
- I was surprised at the depth of the program conducted according to our job category, the thoroughness of preparation, and the consideration paid to the participants.
- The program exceeded my expectations by encouraging experiential and sensory engagement.
- The after-party was the best part, with drinks and a DJ to mingle with colleagues in a trendy venue.
- The workshop was very inspiring for our current work, and I hope other people at our company will have the opportunity to experience it in the future.

It is safe to say that participants left the workshop with much positive energy, but the joy of discovery and rejuvenation that they experienced in the short span of a single day cannot last for an extended period. As a designer, satisfaction is often achieved through challenging tasks and pushing through limits. When they need to focus more intently, drawing on the energy gained from this Joy of Discovery workshop can help designers boldly face and better define their work.

Having conducted numerous workshops with many companies over the past decade, I can honestly say that the Kia Design workshop was a testament to an organization’s willingness to understand its members’ perspectives, consider ways to keep them thinking creatively, and promote individual values. Most importantly, even the best-planned workshop was only meaningful with the fantastic collaboration and focus of the Kia Design’s members, who met for the first time at the workshop yet actively participated in all the programs through healthy dialogue and active communication.

While we cannot control our immediate reaction to the eventfulness of collaboration, we can choose to respond wisely. If this Joy of Discovery workshop has allowed Kia Design members to develop the power of choice, that is great. Hopefully, the Joy of Discovery was a unique opportunity for them to get closer to the “pale blue dot” and recognize the vastness of the universe within themselves. I wish Kia Design and its members all the very best in the future. Let’s enjoy your discovery!

Now Vol.10

How to Discern between What You Know and What You See

How to become a rock

Leeum Museum of Art, July 27 – December 3, 2023

Credits

Words

Suzy Park

Materials

Provided by Leeum Museum of Art

Now Vol.10

How to Discern between What You Know and What You See

How to become a rock

Leeum Museum of Art, July 27 – December 3, 2023

Credits

Words

Suzy Park

Materials

Provided by Leeum Museum of Art