Leaving Lasting Impressions Through Interactive Designs

Tsuqi Hoh Yoke Mei, Creative Director at Multimedia People – MMP Singapore, was recently invited to conduct a sharing titled “Creating Narrative Spaces Through Experiential Design” at The One Academy. The Malaysia Outstanding Creative Youth Award recipient and graduate of the academy shared her expertise and experience with students of the Digital Media Design major.

With close to 11 years’ experience of working in the industry specialising in experiential design, her sharing aimed to expose students to the great potential of digital media design and to better grasp what experiential design means. Experiential design is the art of interactive storytelling involving environment design; in simpler words, designing a space or an experience that surrounds the visitor and transform it into something impressive and immersive, possibly involving all the five senses.

Experiential designs are usually found in spaces such as museums, art galleries, offices, shopping malls, concert halls, hotels, airports and hospitals. The existence of these designs do add value and eventually turn the spaces into tourist attractions. The three strategies to an effective experiential design are – strong graphics displayed in an attractive visual environment, interactive components either digital or traditional to engage visitors, and well-articulated content that resonates with the audience.

“To achieve a seamless experience, we need to mix the tangible – such as space and objects, with the intangible – which is interactive digital work. The aim is to create personal connections for each and every visitor,” explained Hoh.

She also shared some of her notable works done with her team at MMP. Her proudest achievement was for the project “Paradox-ity: City of Contrast” which won two international awards at the World Expo in Yeosu, South Korea. Meanwhile, the most satisfying project was “The Sea in Our Lives” for Singapore Maritime Gallery where it depicts how everything in Singapore is imported and comes in through its seaports. The most talked about project however is for Gardens by the Bay, where the energy used to power the two super domes is harvested from the super trees and biofuel from plants.

She conveyed that the skill sets needed to be a digital media designer in experiential design are to be open-minded and willing to work on projects out of the box, to not limit oneself to the tools, as well as to be able to design, program and most importantly, imagine the whole process and end result. She also urged to learn new things every day, explaining that the nature of her job is to share the knowledge learned by finding interesting ways to share it with everyone.

“You must have the passion. There will be obstacles at any point in time from the beginning to the end. However, never give up,” she said of the essential qualities needed to succeed in the industry.

“If you’re not brave enough to try, then you won’t get there,” she imparted to the students lastly.

The One Academy is committed to providing the best art education programmes and continues to nurture its students passionately through its “Masters Train Masters” coaching philosophy, which has been practised for the past 28 years, by providing diploma and degree courses namely Advertising & Graphic Design, Digital Animation, Digital Media Design, Film Visual Effects, Interior Architecture & Design, Illustration, Fine Arts and Paris Fashion Design & Pattern Making. For more information on The One Academy, visit www.toa.edu.my or call +603-7875 5510 or e-mail your enquiries to [email protected].