User-centered Smart City Service Design

Abstract

We are now facing one of the largest waves of disruptive changes known as the Fourth Industrial Revolution. It is expected to change almost every aspect of the way we interact with the world. A strong wind of ‘connectedness’ and ‘intelligence’ is now blowing towards the city where we live, which is gradually turning our living environment into a smart city. A variety of smart devices are being introduced. Besides those personal and/or privately owned devices we are already quite familiar with, public devices such as the intelligent street lights are being deployed on the road, and almost every component that constitute the city such as vehicles, roads, and buildings, is becoming smarter. Likewise, a variety of solutions are also being introduced such as water, waste, energy, and safety, to name only a few. Behind the scenes a group of well-known technologies such as IoT, Big Data, Blockchain are enabling the change. But to most of us, it seems like a pile of jigsaw pieces scattered all around us. We are in fact struggling with the challenging mission of harnessing connectedness and intelligence into our lives without making people who use them puzzled.

Aiming at the IoT world, a lot of IoT products appeared in the market but many of them were disappointing. They were often useless, and as a result, failed to attract people, i.e., the market. On the other hand, some features recently deployed in premium cars such as intelligent headlights or advanced driver assistant systems are quite attractive. Just like the products, I believe there are bad and good smart cities as well.

As a user experience strategist, my goal has always been reinventing technology and business to be more human-centered. Therefore, to me, the advent of a connected and intelligent information era is analogous to new opportunities to collaborate with professionals in a variety of technology and business domains to make the world a better place for people to live in.

This speech aims to unfold the story of a user experience strategist who is creating the human-centered, connected, and intelligent future, also known as the ‘Smart City.’ I’d like to talk about two things: what makes a good ‘smart city’ and how to make it.