Bronze Event and Happening Design · 2026
The Veggie School Festival Educational Exhibition
by Ting Shuo Wang - Yeah Yeah Ltd.
- A' Design Award 2026 Bronze Winner in Event and Happening Design
- Awarded April 15, 2026
- CLIENT: YEAH YEAH Ltd.
- Estimated Number of Design Views: 9,765
- Verification code 9B98E08C78 · Verify this award
About The Veggie School Festival Educational Exhibition
The Veggie School Festival is a public educational exhibition that presents food and agriculture through a multisensory framework. The design translates local crops, seasonal cycles, and farming environments into tactile and auditory installations. Engineered for universal accessibility, the exhibition features specialized interfaces for individuals with visual impairments, enabling shared learning across different ages and physical abilities.
The Veggie School Festival Educational Exhibition by Ting Shuo Wang engages contemporary educational design traditions that recognize the profound pedagogical value of transforming abstract nutritional concepts into tangible, emotionally resonant visual narratives accessible to young learners and their families, positioning itself within the broader movement toward experiential learning environments that privilege interactive discovery over passive information reception. The installation demonstrates sophisticated understanding of color psychology in educational contexts, deploying a carefully calibrated chromatic palette that balances stimulating vibrancy with visual comfort, avoiding the overstimulation that can accompany poorly considered saturation levels in children's spaces while maintaining the energetic appeal essential for capturing and sustaining youthful attention. Compositionally, the work achieves notable success in integrating two-dimensional graphic storytelling with three-dimensional spatial intervention, creating a hybrid environment where illustration and architecture collaborate to construct an immersive educational world, the curved wall form generates gentle envelopment without creating claustrophobic enclosure, while the foreground platforms establish concrete points of tactile engagement that ground abstract visual information in physical interaction. The anthropomorphization of vegetables represents a time-honored pedagogical strategy here executed with particular charm and cultural specificity, the character designs achieving the delicate balance between sufficient personality to engage emotional investment and sufficient simplification to avoid overwhelming complexity, each vegetable maintaining botanical recognizability while acquiring expressive agency through minimal but effective facial features and posture suggestions. The architectural rendering of the school building anchors the vegetable community within institutional context, suggesting that nutritional education belongs not in isolated clinical settings but within the familiar trusted environment of educational institutions where children already invest attention and develop foundational knowledge frameworks. The integration of Chinese typography throughout the composition demonstrates thoughtful cultural localization, ensuring that linguistic accessibility matches visual accessibility, with character scale and placement following established hierarchical conventions that guide reading patterns without creating visual congestion. The interactive platforms, rendered in confident saturated yellow that commands attention without chromatic aggression, suggest hands-on learning opportunities that might include tactile vegetable specimens, sensory exploration activities, or participatory games that reinforce nutritional concepts through embodied experience rather than abstract memorization. The overall spatial organization invites circulation and exploration rather than static frontal observation, the gentle curve encouraging lateral movement and multiple viewing positions that might accommodate classroom groups, family units, or individual young visitors approaching at their own pace and according to their own curiosity patterns. One might observe how the work navigates the complex challenge of making nutritional education genuinely appealing rather than obligatory, transforming vegetables from potential objects of childhood resistance into friendly characters whose consumption becomes an act of social participation in a joyful community rather than compliance with adult dietary mandates, inviting viewers to consider how visual design might serve not merely as decoration for educational content but as fundamental pedagogical infrastructure that shapes how knowledge becomes emotionally meaningful and behaviorally relevant in young lives.
Press Kit
- Unique Properties
- The Veggie School Festival is an educational exhibition designed as an immersive public event, transforming food and agriculture education into a multisensory, inclusive experience. Through interactive sound installations, tactile learning interfaces, spatial storytelling, and guided participation, the exhibition enables children, families, and visually-impaired participants to engage equally with agricultural knowledge, emotional connection to food, and environmental awareness.
- Dimensions & Packaging
- Main exhibition area approximately 82 meters by 17 meters (1,394 square meters), located in an open indoor civic hall. The experience is divided into themed zones including growth visualization area, tactile–audio interaction field, educational activity area and citizen engagement zone. Interactive installations utilize conductive sensor modules, sound response systems and accessible operation layouts designed for inclusive participation.
- Tags
- Inclusive Design, Multisensory Experience, Interactive Exhibition, Social Design, Public Engagement, Educational Event
- Production Technology
- The exhibition was realized through an interdisciplinary design methodology combining spatial design, interactive installation engineering and inclusive design research. Tactile interfaces were built using conductive sensing and responsive audio systems to translate touch into sound. User testing with children and visually impaired participants informed iteration of interaction flow, material selection and sensitivity calibration to ensure accessibility and shared participation.
- Design Challenge
- The main challenge was translating agricultural education, traditionally limited to farm-based experiences, into an engaging urban exhibition while ensuring true inclusiveness. Most food–agriculture exhibitions struggle to provide multisensory accessibility, so we designed game-based learning and five-sense experiences to enable diverse audiences, including visually-impaired visitors, to meaningfully participate and connect with agriculture.
- Project Duration
- The exhibition was held from August 4 to August 15, 2025 at the New Taipei City Hall Civic Lobby.
- Operation Flow
- Visitors begin by observing local agricultural growth stories, gaining awareness of how crops develop in New Taipei City. They then enter a tactile and sound interaction zone, where touching plants triggers audio feedback to explore how nature feels and communicates. Finally, participants build their own ideal farm, reflecting on learning, participation and environmental responsibility. The multisensory design ensures inclusive access for diverse audiences.
- Research
- Applied design research aiming to create an inclusive, multisensory agricultural education experience. A mixed-methods methodology combined literature review, field observation, prototyping and iterative user testing. Surveys, interviews and behavior tracking were used with children, families and visually-impaired participants. The results showed higher engagement and comprehension. Insights demonstrated that tactile and audio interaction significantly improves access and equity. The research informs future civic exhibitions, public learning design and social policy directions.
- Inspiration
- The project was inspired by the belief that food and agriculture education should be accessible to everyone, regardless of ability or background. Research on inclusive learning environments and social design guided the development of multi-sensory experiences, particularly tactile exploration and sound interaction, enabling diverse audiences, including visually impaired participants, to engage with agriculture in meaningful and personal ways.
- Image Credits
- Image #1: Photographer Hsiao Ju Tsai, Main Image, 2025.
Image #2: Photographer Hsiao Ju Tsai, Main Exhibition Area A – Growth Diary, 2025.
Image #3: Photographer Hsiao Ju Tsai, Main Exhibition Area C – Farm Laboratory, 2025.
Image #4: Photographer Hsiao Ju Tsai, Main Exhibition Area B – Veggie Sound Playground (Interaction), 2025.
Image #5: Photographer Hsiao Ju Tsai, Main Exhibition Area B – Veggie Sound Playground (Braille guidance), 2025.
Video Credits: Videographer Chun Ting Chou, Exhibition Documentary, 2025.
Colors of The Veggie School Festival Educational Exhibition
Grand Interview about The Veggie School Festival Educational Exhibition
The tactile and audio systems in The Veggie School Festival Educational Exhibition were developed from an accessibility and educational question: how could visitors, including visually impaired participants and young children, understand plants and agriculture without relying only on visual information?Our team designed an interactive system in which sensor patches were embedded into plant-shaped installations. When visitors touched a plant, the system would respond with sound. Different plants produced different sounds, allowing visitors to discover that each plant had its own “voice” within the exhibition.This interaction was not designed merely as a technical function. It was created to communicate an ecological idea: plants are not passive or silent beings. They can sense changes in their environment and respond to the world around them. They also communicate with other plants through various natural signals. By giving each plant a sound response, we transformed this scientific concept into an intuitive, emotional, and memorable experience.For the sensitivity calibration, we paid close attention to how different users would touch the plants. Children may tap quickly, press repeatedly, or explore with excitement, while visually impaired visitors may touch more slowly and carefully to understand the form and texture. Therefore, the sensors needed to respond clearly to intentional touch, while avoiding accidental triggers that might confuse the narrative.We also adjusted the timing, volume, and character of each sound. If the response was too delayed, visitors might not connect their touch with the plant’s reaction. If the sound was too loud, too long, or too similar across different plants, the experience would become less meaningful. Our goal was to make each response feel like a gentle conversation between the visitor and the plant.For us, the conductive sensing and responsive audio system was a tool for knowledge translation. Through touch and sound, visitors could experience the idea that plants are living beings connected to their surroundings, rather than static objects displayed in an exhibition. This helped make agricultural knowledge more accessible, especially for children and visually impaired participants.
During the development of The Veggie School Festival Educational Exhibition, user testing with children and visually impaired participants changed our understanding of accessibility in a very practical way.At the beginning, accessibility could easily be understood as a matter of physical access, such as ramps, circulation routes, signage, or basic safety. These are essential, but through testing we realized that genuine accessibility in a public learning environment requires much more than allowing people to enter the space. It requires allowing them to participate in the meaning of the exhibition.When we observed how children and visually impaired participants interacted with the tactile and audio installations, we learned that access is not only about movement, but also about rhythm, clarity, confidence, and emotional connection. Some visitors needed more time to explore with their hands. Some children touched quickly and repeatedly. Some participants understood the story better through sound, while others needed a clearer relationship between touch, object, and response.These observations led us to adjust many details: the height and position of interactive elements, the texture and scale of plant forms, the sensitivity of the sensor patches, the timing of the audio response, the length and density of the narration, and the way visitors were guided through the experience. We also became more aware that sound should not simply provide information. It should help visitors build a spatial and emotional understanding of the agricultural world.One important lesson was that accessibility should not create a separate experience for visually impaired visitors. Instead, it should create a shared sensory language that allows visually impaired and sighted participants to learn together. In this exhibition, touch and sound were not supplementary features; they became central ways of understanding plants, agriculture, and the relationship between living beings and their environment.Through this process, we came to see inclusive design as a continuous act of listening and adjustment. It is not a checklist completed at the end of the project, but a design attitude that must shape the exhibition from the beginning. For us, genuine accessibility means that different visitors can enter the same story through different senses, and still feel equally invited, respected, and able to understand.
I believe the transferable value of this methodology does not lie only in the hardware itself, but in the way it transforms food systems into a shared sensory learning experience.Many urban residents are physically and emotionally distant from the processes that produce their food. Agriculture is often understood through labels, statistics, or environmental slogans, but these forms of communication can still feel abstract. In The Veggie School Festival Educational Exhibition, we tried to use conductive sensor modules and responsive audio systems to turn crops, soil, seasons, and farming environments into something visitors could touch, hear, and explore with their bodies.This methodology can become a useful model for other civic institutions because it provides a flexible structure. A museum, school, library, community center, or public exhibition can adapt the same logic to its own local food culture and agricultural issues. The plants, sounds, stories, and scientific messages can all be changed according to the region, while the core principle remains the same: translate invisible systems into sensory interaction.For example, instead of simply explaining that plants respond to environmental changes, we allowed visitors to touch plant installations and hear different sound responses from different crops. This helped communicate that plants are living beings connected to their surroundings, and that agriculture is not only about production, but also about relationships among soil, water, climate, plants, insects, farmers, and consumers.The important point is that technology should not become the main character. It should serve as a bridge. In this project, the sensors and audio responses were used to create curiosity, emotional connection, and accessibility. They helped children, visually impaired participants, and sighted visitors enter the same story through different senses.For civic institutions, this offers a practical model: begin with a local issue, identify the knowledge gap, translate key concepts into tactile and auditory cues, test the experience with real users, and refine the interaction until it becomes intuitive and meaningful. Through this process, public education can move beyond passive information display and become an embodied experience.In this sense, The Veggie School Festival Educational Exhibition suggests that agricultural education in cities does not have to remain distant from daily life. With thoughtful design, food systems can become something people can feel, listen to, and understand together.
Receiving recognition through the A' Event and Happening Design Award is very meaningful to us, not only because it acknowledges the creativity and execution of the exhibition, but also because it recognizes the importance of public experience design as a form of social and environmental communication.The Veggie School Festival Educational Exhibition was not created simply as an agricultural event or a children’s activity. From the beginning, we hoped to bring together agricultural literacy, sensory accessibility, and civic engagement within one shared public space. Food is something everyone depends on, but the systems behind food production are often distant from urban life. Through design, we wanted to make those systems more visible, more approachable, and more emotionally connected to everyday experience.This recognition makes us feel that designers have a broader responsibility when shaping public events. We are not only arranging spaces or creating attractive visuals. We are also deciding what kinds of relationships people may notice, what voices may be included, and what issues may become easier to understand.In this exhibition, we tried to create a space where children, families, visually impaired participants, and general visitors could all enter the same story through different senses. By using touch, sound, play, and storytelling, we hoped to help people understand that food is connected to soil, seasons, plants, farmers, ecology, and community life.For us, the award reflects a belief that shared urban spaces can become places of learning, empathy, and ecological awareness. Designers have the responsibility to create experiences that do more than attract attention. They should help communities reconnect with the systems that sustain them, and with the people and living beings that share the same environment.
The most defining obstacle for us was how to translate something that is naturally seasonal, outdoor, and bodily experienced into an indoor civic space, while also making that experience meaningful for different groups of visitors, including children and visually impaired participants.Agricultural education is usually rooted in direct experience: touching soil, observing crops over time, feeling weather changes, and understanding how seasons shape food. However, in the New Taipei City Hall Civic Lobby, we were working within an urban public environment that was bright, fast-moving, and highly artificial. We could not simply recreate a farm. We had to ask ourselves: when the real field is absent, can people still feel the presence of agriculture through other senses?This question became especially important when we considered diverse audiences. We wanted to know whether touch and sound could strengthen the way visually impaired visitors, children, and general audiences experience agriculture. For some visitors, visual information is not enough or may not be accessible at all. For others, especially young children, understanding often begins from touching, listening, playing, and bodily exploration.This challenge changed the direction of the installation. At first, it would have been easy to present agriculture through information panels, crop displays, or decorative scenery. But we realized that this would not create a deep enough connection. The exhibition needed to create a sensory memory, not just deliver facts.As a result, we placed more emphasis on tactile and auditory design. The tactile plants, sensor patches, and responsive audio system allowed visitors to experience crops as living beings that could respond to touch. Different plant sounds helped communicate the idea that plants are sensitive to environmental changes and connected to one another. In this way, touch and sound became not only accessible features, but also central educational tools.Navigating this challenge also made us more selective. We could not include every agricultural issue at once. Instead, we focused on creating clear sensory entry points: What does a plant feel like? What might a plant’s response sound like? How does food relate to seasons? How are people, crops, soil, and environment connected?In the end, the obstacle of bringing farm-based education into an urban civic lobby helped us define the philosophical and sensory character of the exhibition. The final installation was not designed to imitate a farm, but to awaken an awareness of agriculture within the city. It invited visitors to understand food production not as something distant, but as a living system that can be felt, heard, and connected to everyday life.
The experiential sequence of The Veggie School Festival Educational Exhibition was designed as a gradual shift from observation, to sensory engagement, and finally to personal creation.We began with local agricultural growth stories because we wanted visitors to first understand that food does not appear suddenly in daily life. It comes from land, climate, seasons, farmers, and local environments. This opening section provided the basic context and helped visitors recognize agriculture as a living system connected to their own city and everyday meals.The second stage introduced tactile and sound-based interaction with plants. After visitors understood the agricultural stories, we wanted them to move beyond looking and begin feeling. Through touching plant installations and hearing different sound responses, visitors could experience plants as living beings that sense environmental changes and communicate with their surroundings. This stage was especially important for children and visually impaired participants, because it allowed knowledge to be accessed through the body, not only through vision or text.The final stage invited visitors to construct a personally imagined farm. This was a deliberate decision. We did not want the exhibition to end with passive information reception. Instead, we wanted visitors to reorganize what they had learned and express it through their own choices. By building a farm, they had to think about relationships: What crops should be planted? What kind of environment do plants need? How do people, food, soil, water, insects, and seasons coexist?Our inclusive design research and user testing showed us that genuine learning happens more deeply when visitors are allowed to participate, decide, and create. Children often understand concepts better when they can transform information into play. Visually impaired participants also benefited when the experience was not limited to explanation, but included touch, spatial imagination, and active construction.For this reason, the ending of the exhibition was designed as an act of creative personal agency. It gave visitors the opportunity to become part of the agricultural story, rather than only observing it from outside. We believe public learning should not only deliver knowledge. It should help people feel that they are capable of imagining, choosing, and shaping a more sustainable relationship with food and the environment.
The research and testing behind The Veggie School Festival Educational Exhibition confirmed for us that tactile and audio interaction can significantly strengthen engagement and comprehension, especially when working with diverse participant groups.For our future work, the most important influence is not that we will simply repeat the same technology or installation format. Rather, this project has helped us establish a clearer methodology for public learning design: begin with the subject matter, examine the scientific foundation, identify what is difficult to understand through text or vision alone, and then translate those concepts into spatial, tactile, auditory, and participatory experiences.Our team includes members with backgrounds in biology and agriculture, so our interactive designs are not developed only from imagination or visual appeal. Before designing a game or installation, we first study relevant scientific literature and verify the knowledge behind the topic. Only after understanding the ecological or agricultural principles do we begin to transform them into playful and accessible interactions. This process helps ensure that the final experience is not only engaging, but also scientifically grounded.The spatial strategy developed in this exhibition will continue to influence how we design learning journeys. We now think more carefully about how visitors move from awareness to sensory exploration, and then to personal interpretation or action. This structure can be applied beyond agriculture. Whether the topic is biodiversity, climate change, public health, cultural heritage, or social care, we believe public learning should guide people from noticing, to feeling, to making meaning for themselves.The interaction principles are also transferable. In The Veggie School Festival Educational Exhibition, touch and sound were not used as decorative effects. They were designed as tools for knowledge translation. This principle can be adapted to many ecological or social topics: invisible systems can be made perceptible, abstract relationships can become embodied, and complex knowledge can be experienced through multiple senses.Most importantly, the inclusive methodology from this project has changed how we define the starting point of design. Accessibility should not be added at the end as a supplementary feature. It should shape the entire design from the beginning, including the choice of media, the rhythm of interaction, the clarity of information, and the emotional safety of the experience.In future projects, even when the audience, institution, or subject matter is very different, we will continue to ask the same questions: What is the scientific or social knowledge that must be carefully understood first? Who might be excluded if the experience depends only on vision, text, or prior knowledge? What other senses can help people enter the story? How can design create a shared learning environment where different participants can understand in different ways, but still feel equally included?For us, The Veggie School Festival Educational Exhibition was not only an agricultural education project. It became a model for designing public learning as a multi-sensory, inclusive, scientifically grounded, and emotionally meaningful experience.
One dimension of The Veggie School Festival Educational Exhibition that I feel deserves deeper attention is the role of sensory accessibility as a core design language, rather than as an additional support system.In many public exhibitions, accessibility is still treated as something added after the main experience has already been designed. It may appear as supplementary signage, alternative routes, or separate explanations for specific groups. These elements are important, but in this project, we wanted to explore whether accessibility could become central to how everyone learns.The tactile plants, sensor patches, and responsive audio system were initially developed to support diverse participants, including visually impaired visitors and children. However, one of the most meaningful findings was that these sensory interactions did not benefit only one group. Sighted visitors, families, and children also became more engaged when they could touch, listen, and receive responses from the plants. This showed us that inclusive design can improve the experience for all participants, not only for those who are usually categorized as needing special support.I think this point deserves more attention from the design community. Inclusive design should not be understood only as a matter of solving limitations. It can also open new possibilities for storytelling, emotional connection, and knowledge translation. In our exhibition, touch and sound allowed visitors to understand that plants are living beings that respond to their environment and are connected to larger ecological systems. This idea might have remained abstract if it were presented only through text or images.Another important dimension is that sensory design must still be grounded in knowledge. Our team includes members with backgrounds in biology and agriculture, so the interactions were not created only for entertainment. They were developed after studying scientific literature and considering how agricultural and ecological concepts could be translated into public learning. This balance between scientific accuracy and emotional experience is something I hope more public exhibitions will continue to explore.For me, the most unexpected and valuable response was seeing different visitors enter the same story through different senses. Children played, visually impaired participants explored through touch and sound, and sighted adults rediscovered agriculture in a more physical way. This reminded us that public design can do more than present information. It can create a shared space where different people feel equally invited to learn, imagine, and participate.
The citizen engagement zone of The Veggie School Festival Educational Exhibition was designed to move visitors from receiving information to making choices.One of the key participatory mechanisms was the final farm-building activity. After visitors observed local agricultural stories and experienced plants through touch and sound, they were invited to construct their own imagined farm. This was not simply a playful ending. It was designed as a decision-making exercise. Visitors had to think about what crops to include, what kind of environment plants need, and how soil, water, insects, seasons, farmers, and consumers are connected.We also used question-based guidance throughout the exhibition to encourage family and group conversations. Instead of giving visitors only fixed answers, the experience asked them to compare, choose, and explain. For children, this allowed agricultural knowledge to become something they could express in their own words. For adults, it created an opportunity to reconsider everyday food choices, such as seasonality, local production, and the environmental relationships behind food.The tactile and audio installations also served as participatory mechanisms. By allowing visitors to touch the plants and hear different responses, the exhibition suggested that plants and agricultural systems are not passive background elements, but living systems that respond to environmental conditions. This helped shift the visitor’s role from observer to participant within the story.In terms of evaluation, we were careful not to claim that a short-term exhibition alone could fully measure long-term behavioral change. Instead, we focused on whether the exhibition successfully created the beginning of civic agency. We observed how long visitors stayed, whether they returned to interact with the installations, whether children explained the concepts to parents or teachers, and whether participants could describe the relationship between food, plants, seasons, and environment after the experience.Qualitative feedback was especially important to us. When visitors were able to say, in their own words, that food is connected to land, ecology, and daily choices, we saw this as an important sign that the exhibition had gone beyond passive information delivery.For us, sustaining civic agency does not always mean that a single exhibition immediately changes every behavior. It means planting a question that follows visitors after they leave: What kind of food system am I part of, and what choices can I make within it? The exhibition was designed to create that first moment of awareness, ownership, and responsibility.
The material and interaction surfaces in The Veggie School Festival Educational Exhibition were selected according to three main principles: sensory clarity, educational meaning, and public durability.Because this exhibition was designed for children, families, and visually impaired participants, the surfaces could not be chosen only for visual beauty. They needed to be safe to touch, easy to understand through the hands, durable enough for repeated public use, and meaningful in relation to the agricultural concept. We wanted each surface to help visitors feel that they were encountering plants, fruits, vegetables, soil, and farming environments, rather than simply touching decorative objects.When selecting the fruits and vegetables for tactile experience, we deliberately chose forms with different textures, shapes, scales, and surface qualities. Some had smoother surfaces, some had stronger ridges, some were round, and others had more irregular or elongated forms. This diversity was important because it allowed visually impaired participants to build a richer understanding of agricultural produce through touch. It also helped children notice that crops are not uniform objects, but living things with distinct forms and characteristics.We also incorporated a braille guidance system beside the exhibition texts. The height and position of the braille information were carefully considered so that visually impaired visitors could naturally reach and follow the guidance during the experience. Rather than treating braille as an additional label placed after the design was completed, we considered it part of the visitor’s movement and tactile journey from the beginning.For the tactile plant installations, we paid close attention to texture contrast, scale, edge treatment, touching area, and the position of sensor patches. A surface needed to be clear enough for visually impaired participants to distinguish by touch, but also gentle and inviting enough for young children. The interaction geometry was also important. If the touch point was too small, visitors might miss it. If it was too large or too sensitive, accidental contact could trigger the sound and weaken the connection between action and response.The testing process with children and visually impaired participants helped us refine many details. We adjusted the height and angle of interactive elements, the size of the touchable areas, the sensitivity of the sensor patches, the timing of the audio response, and the relationship between tactile exploration and braille reading. We also learned that the relationship between texture and sound had to be intuitive. Visitors needed to feel that the sound belonged to the plant they were touching, rather than coming from a separate technical system.One surprise was that tactile design created a deeper emotional response than we first expected. For visually impaired participants, the textures, braille guidance, and audio responses provided a way to enter the agricultural story without relying on sight. For children, the same surfaces encouraged curiosity, repetition, and play. Some children touched the plants again and again, not only to trigger sound, but to test whether the plants would “respond” differently. This helped reinforce the idea that plants are living beings that can sense and react to their environment.Another important finding was that accurate realism was not always the most effective approach. Sometimes, a slightly simplified or emphasized texture helped visitors understand the concept more clearly than a visually realistic surface. This reminded us that material design in public learning should not only imitate nature. It should translate nature into a form that different bodies and senses can read.In the end, the materials and interaction surfaces became part of the exhibition’s storytelling. They carried scientific meaning, emotional resonance, and inclusive access at the same time. Through iterative testing, we learned that a good tactile interface is not just something people touch. It is something that helps people feel invited, confident, curious, and connected to the living systems behind food and agriculture.