Reflection – Storytelling 

 Challenge 

 I am a member of the “ Design Management ” department in a retail - based 

 organization . My job scope often requires me to embark on innovative taskforces to 

 propose new retail ideas and architectural innovations ahead of current retail trends . 

 My recent challenge was to propose unique landscape concepts and ideas that can 

 be incorporated architecturally to create revolutionary state - of - the - art retail spaces , 

 to bring greater values to my organization ’s future retail malls . 

 Selection 

 For kick - start , I focused on extensive research on publications and the internet , 

 focusing on traditional landscape design theories , latest landscape technologies , 

 highly dependent on information available on public platforms . As a result , my initial 

 proposals was very limited in content and deemed as too idealistic and unrealistic , 

 impossible to implement and unsustainable , particularly criticized and challenged by 

 my organization ’s property management team . Upon reflecting , I realized that my 

 failure stems from that my proposal was shallow , merely touching upon landscape 

 design aesthetics , without true understanding for the process of growing and 

 maintaining plants , and inconsiderate to users ’ needs . I recognized that I will need 

 immersive exploration of the landscape field in order to successfully redefine my 

 “ What is ? ” , reveal realistic problems and unarticulated insights to uncover underlying 

 opportunities and possibilities . My approach was to utilize “ Story - telling ” to help to 

 empathize with true user experience as a means to curate unconventional retail 

 ideas . 

 Application 

 I interviewed my organization ’s property management team to understand their 

 realistic daily operational difficulties in maintaining landscapes in our malls and 

 learnt from their iterations of common mistakes made by landscape designers . For 

 example , more than often , landscape designs are utopias as designers has minimal 

 understanding for their proposed choice of plant species , which often turns out to be 

 unsuitable for growth in the local climate and conditions etc . In particular , they 

 identified that their greatest challenge was maintaining green walls in indoor malls 

 and ensuring that the green walls continue to attain their designed aesthetic outlook , 

 and often at an expensive maintenance cost . Subsequently , upon establishing a 

 rapport with the property management team , they invited me on overseas guided 

 visits to landscape - themed parks and research laboratories by landscape experts and 

 meetings with green wall suppliers whom they have acquaintance with . The resultant 

 proposal is a green wall collaboration with the suppliers we have met . It was an 

 unanticipated success : achieving a win - win situation for all the 3 parties . For our 

 property management team , the green walls ’ maintenance cost were greatly 

 reduced with their maintenance work taken over by the suppliers , who in return 

 showcased their products in our mall for advertisements . Also , I was able to ensure 

 that my avant - garde landscape ideas can be implemented and sustainably 

 maintained with expertise assistance , at a reasonable cost . 

 Insight & Approach 

 Through adopting the “ Storytelling tool ” , not only was I able to gain in - depth 

 understanding and journey - map the property management team ’s job to establish 

 valuable design opportunities through empathizing with their daily job challenges . I 

 was able to establish a rapport with the property management team through our 

 interview conversations and interactions , thus successfully inviting their contribution 

 and engaging them in design and co - creation of my proposal , which definitely has 

 significant impact on its success . This experience has therefore allowed me fully 

 comprehend the power of “ Storytelling ” and the limitless potentials that it 

 empowers . 


EMAIL: 
ID_NUM: 
NAME_STUDENT: 
PHONE_NUM: 
STREET_ADDRESS: 
URL_PERSONAL: 
USERNAME: 

### Task: You are a PII (Personal Identity Information) Detection. Given a essays written by students, you have to identify ONLY the following:
NAME_STUDENT - The full or partial name of a student that is not necessarily the author of the essay. This excludes instructors, authors, and other person names.
EMAIL - A student’s email address.
USERNAME - A student's username on any platform.
ID_NUM - A number or sequence of characters that could be used to identify a student, such as a student ID or a social security number.
PHONE_NUM - A phone number associated with a student.
URL_PERSONAL - A URL that might be used to identify a student.
STREET_ADDRESS - A full or partial street address that is associated with the student, such as their home address.
### Input: Reflection – Storytelling 

 Challenge 

 I am a member of the “ Design Management ” department in a retail - based 

 organization . My job scope often requires me to embark on innovative taskforces to 

 propose new retail ideas and architectural innovations ahead of current retail trends . 

 My recent challenge was to propose unique landscape concepts and ideas that can 

 be incorporated architecturally to create revolutionary state - of - the - art retail spaces , 

 to bring greater values to my organization ’s future retail malls . 

 Selection 

 For kick - start , I focused on extensive research on publications and the internet , 

 focusing on traditional landscape design theories , latest landscape technologies , 

 highly dependent on information available on public platforms . As a result , my initial 

 proposals was very limited in content and deemed as too idealistic and unrealistic , 

 impossible to implement and unsustainable , particularly criticized and challenged by 

 my organization ’s property management team . Upon reflecting , I realized that my 

 failure stems from that my proposal was shallow , merely touching upon landscape 

 design aesthetics , without true understanding for the process of growing and 

 maintaining plants , and inconsiderate to users ’ needs . I recognized that I will need 

 immersive exploration of the landscape field in order to successfully redefine my 

 “ What is ? ” , reveal realistic problems and unarticulated insights to uncover underlying 

 opportunities and possibilities . My approach was to utilize “ Story - telling ” to help to 

 empathize with true user experience as a means to curate unconventional retail 

 ideas . 

 Application 

 I interviewed my organization ’s property management team to understand their 

 realistic daily operational difficulties in maintaining landscapes in our malls and 

 learnt from their iterations of common mistakes made by landscape designers . For 

 example , more than often , landscape designs are utopias as designers has minimal 

 understanding for their proposed choice of plant species , which often turns out to be 

 unsuitable for growth in the local climate and conditions etc . In particular , they 

 identified that their greatest challenge was maintaining green walls in indoor malls 

 and ensuring that the green walls continue to attain their designed aesthetic outlook , 

 and often at an expensive maintenance cost . Subsequently , upon establishing a 

 rapport with the property management team , they invited me on overseas guided 

 visits to landscape - themed parks and research laboratories by landscape experts and 

 meetings with green wall suppliers whom they have acquaintance with . The resultant 

 proposal is a green wall collaboration with the suppliers we have met . It was an 

 unanticipated success : achieving a win - win situation for all the 3 parties . For our 

 property management team , the green walls ’ maintenance cost were greatly 

 reduced with their maintenance work taken over by the suppliers , who in return 

 showcased their products in our mall for advertisements . Also , I was able to ensure 

 that my avant - garde landscape ideas can be implemented and sustainably 

 maintained with expertise assistance , at a reasonable cost . 

 Insight & Approach 

 Through adopting the “ Storytelling tool ” , not only was I able to gain in - depth 

 understanding and journey - map the property management team ’s job to establish 

 valuable design opportunities through empathizing with their daily job challenges . I 

 was able to establish a rapport with the property management team through our 

 interview conversations and interactions , thus successfully inviting their contribution 

 and engaging them in design and co - creation of my proposal , which definitely has 

 significant impact on its success . This experience has therefore allowed me fully 

 comprehend the power of “ Storytelling ” and the limitless potentials that it 

 empowers .
### Output: 