Aligning Stakeholders through Tangible Prototyping
A service design project for the new department (X College) in National Chengchi University. The redesign was blocked by conflicting interests from school administration, professors, and nearby residents. We needed a low-cost, high-fidelity way to prove our solution would work before committing to expensive construction.
- Places and ClientAt National Chengchi University (政治大學)
- My RoleResearch Leader, leading three teams with 25 members
- Team Size18 people
- SupervisorSchool President and school committee members of X College
Problem Statement
The requirement of the new design for X College would lead to severe congestion during peak hours (e.g. break times), creating dangerous and inefficient bottlenecks in student movement. The redesign was blocked by conflicting interests: school administration with strict budget limitations, professors with operational needs, and nearby residents who utilize campus facilities.
Project Goal
To reach alignment on the design of the new school building between school administrators, students, and professor representatives — balancing the congestion of current use, management needs, and budget limitations.
Discovery & Research
Quantitative Validation: We distributed surveys via the university's central social hub (NCCU Exchange), gathering responses from 350 students (approximately 10% of the target population). This phase focused on quantifying perception — determining if students were aware of existing facility locations and measuring their expectations for the new layout.
Qualitative Deep-Dive: Through shadowing and in-depth interviews with diverse stakeholders — from freshmen to visiting scholars — we observed actual usage behavior rather than just reported opinions. We identified the paths users attempted to take versus the inefficient routes the architecture forced them into.
Findings
Our fieldwork revealed that the space shortage was actually a management issue. By identifying that users like the commuter student needed flexible space (dancing/chatting) rather than new space, we convinced the administration to repurpose existing corridors and underutilized corners. Instead of building expensive new facilities, we optimized the efficiency of the existing footprint, aligning the budget limitations of the administration with the social needs of the students.
Design Iteration & Trade-offs
We rejected standard CAD tools in favor of 1:1 cardboard prototyping to bridge the communication gap between technical architects and non-technical residents. Standard architectural blueprints were too abstract for non-designers to understand intuitively.
We used the model to physically simulate "traffic" flows during peak break times to identify choke points. We invited stakeholders to physically move pieces of the model — a professor could see why their request caused a traffic jam, or an administrator could understand how a spatial change saved money.
We also redesigned the circulation paths to separate student rush-hour traffic from community resident usage zones, creating distinct zones that ensured high-traffic areas (students) did not interfere with quiet areas (residents/staff).
Result
Achieved unanimous sign-off from students, teaching staff, and administration. The physical models were successfully translated into technical specifications for the architects and engineers. The project moved from a contentious debate to a validated blueprint ready for construction.
We held role-playing sessions around the physical model. Each team member adopted the persona of a typical user we identified during research. We used Lego figures to physically simulate user journeys, "walking" them through the building to demonstrate how they would interact with the new space.
What I Learned
This project reshaped my understanding of the designer's role in complex systems. I learned that in multi-stakeholder environments, the primary barrier is often not spatial, but political. By choosing low-fidelity cardboard models over high-tech CAD, I discovered that democratizing the design tool is essential for alignment. The model ceased to be just a prototype; it became a boundary object that allowed residents and administrators to speak the same language. Successful strategic design isn't just about creating the solution, but designing the process that allows stakeholders to accept that solution.