Samyan Candle Hunt is the end result of a one week workshop with architecture, urban design and industrial design students at Chulalongkorn. The main goal was for us to teach the Thai students service design methods, while also learning to work cross culturally. Our brief was to design urban services to regenerate Samyan, a deserted neighbourhood in Bangkok.

One week service design workshop
Course: Service design and branding
Oslo School of Architecture and Design & Chulalongkorn University, Bangkok

Team

Norwegian students: Nikolai, Hanna, Sara and Glenn

Thai students: Tata, Yada, Wise, Tiwa, Mos and Au

Site: Zy-Walk

Zy-Walk consists of four blocks in Samyan, where the historic neighboorhood has been demolished and rebuilt into new shopping and residential buildings. While beautiful, they have not been able to keep shops profitable due to few visitors.

Getting to know the locals

Talk to locals, discussing the history, current state and future of Samyan, the Thai students acted as interpreters, including us in the discussions. Coming from two different cultures, we got to question both from a familar and novel perspective.

Us Norwegians misunderstood the translation of this guard, leading to a novel service concept. The Thai students believed we were suggesting something on our own and wanted to go with it.

It was design by miscommunication!

Samyan Candle Hunt is a family game about exploring the buildings at Zy Walk, collecting candles hidden by the game master and enjoying food and dance in the street afterwards.

Visitors become aware of the service through street flyers and social media events.
On the way to Samyan, guests might become stressed by the crowded Sky Train.
To remedy any anxiety from the trip, guests are greeted with and candle lit path the game, meeting other guests on the way.
The game master welcomes all guests, informing about the evening and rules of the game.

The premise of the candle hunt is finding the hidden candles, blowing them out and collecting them. The game is over when all of the candles are found and the area is dark.

The candle hunt is not about who has collected the most, but experiencing it together with friends and family.

At the end of the game, all candles are placed together spelling Samyan, and lit, creating a warm glow.
The game master thanks all of the guests for participating, gifting them a candle each as a memory.
After the game as ended, street food vendors gather at Zy Walk, providing everyone with the chance to fill their bellies.
The evening continues with a street party, where one can dance until late night.

*All of these amazing illustrations were made by the Thai students.

A central part of the workshop was prototyping our service concept, getting to experience it ourselves and also getting feedback from others.

Prototyping in an empty classroom at Chulalongkorn University

User testers from other faculties reported that they experienced the prototype as "magical and wonderful". While we of course discovered a lot of improvements, we felt that the game had potential.

teaching customer journey maps

In addition to a final presentation, the end delivery of the workshop was a customer journey map explaining the user experience of the service. This was one of the methods we Norwegians taught the Thai students. Our mantra was: “The best way to learn something is to teach it to others.”