Moving Taipei
An Interactive Try-It Box Platform
Project Type
Interactive, Branding
Date
June 2025
Role
Interaction designer, Visual Designer
Tool
Framer, Figma, CSS3D, There.js, After Effects
Moving Taipei is an interactive platform from a two-week study trip in Taipei, celebrating the city’s everyday “moving objects” like stalls and scooters as ingenious design systems. Through a sandbox game, users can remix these flexible urban elements into global or diasporic contexts and share reflections in a digital comment basket, reframing street life as vibrant design intelligence rather than clutter.
My Scope
Visual Identity, Website Design & Build, Technical Execution
Project Background
Taipei’s streets are alive with motion, stalls, scooters, and makeshift setups that transform daily life. What seems like clutter is actually a system of ingenuity and flexibility that inspired Moving Taipei.
Design Challenge & Opportunity
CHALLENGE:
Taipei’s mobile street designs often dismissed as clutter.
OPPORTUNITY:
Recognize them as design systems, celebrate ingenuity, and reimagine them for global contexts.
Visual Identity
I designed the logo by reforming English letters with BoPoMoFo components (Taiwanese phonetic system), using Taiwanese culture to invert the dominance of English. The neon scrambling animation highlights this playful yet critical identity, serving as the website’s main visual anchor.
Website Design & Build
Day vs. Night Mode
Starting from Taipei’s perspective! To immerse users in Taipei’s present moment, I designed a day/night toggle synced with Taipei local time. The website dynamically switches between two visual versions, bright daytime and neon night, by embedding custom code into Framer. This feature allows visitors around the world to experience the city as if they were physically there.
Try-It Box (Main Interactive Experience)
The Try-It Box is the core experience of Moving Taipei. Users can place Taipei’s mobile street objects (3D assets created by my teammate-Elizabeth Liu) into Google Street View scenes, first in random global locations, and later in the Diasporic Mode focused on Asian immigrant communities.
Worldwide vs. Diasporic: Asking deeper questions than just fun
​The design raises questions:
When Taipei’s vernacular objects appear in exotic cities like London, do they stand out or blend in?
And in Asian enclaves such as San Gabriel, Richmond, or London Chinatown, how do they assert a distinct Taiwanese identity amidst other diasporic cultures?
A Try-it box example is in San Francisco Chinatown.
By contrasting Worldwide Mode with Diasporic Mode, the platform encourages deeper reflection on Taiwan’s cultural visibility, resilience, and struggles for recognition abroad.
Comment Basket
To conclude the interaction, I designed a Comment Basket where users can upload their Try-It results and leave reflections. The basket’s visual reference comes from Taiwan’s everyday fruit and grocery baskets, ordinary yet iconic cultural objects.
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On the technical side, I built the comments in CSS3D + Three.js, so each submission appears in perspective, scattered within the basket’s depth.
For the backend, I implemented Firebase to store text comments and Cloudinary to manage uploaded images.
Our Manifesto
In Taipei,
stalls roll,
awnings unfold,
and scooters fuse with buildings.
To us, what looks like clutter in a planning textbook is,
—Adaptive Intelligence,
proof that cities can be frugal,
flexible, and deeply personal.
We’re turning this everyday ingenuity into
an open platform and try-it box,
where anyone can remix Taipei’s FLEXIBLE objects worldwide, in their own streets and projects.
We're asking you—
Grab an Object,
Hack it,
Plant it Everywhere.
Let the world move with Taipei’s playful resourcefulness !