The global pandemic has accelerated the development and application of new retail. The industry-academia collaboration programs also needs to accommodate to the “new normal” by focusing on the integration of online and offline channels. Taipei Tech and Clevo, a Taiwanese computer maker company, collaborate on an internship program for the planning of Taipei Twin Towers to cultivate talents for the new retail industry. On October 30th, Taipei Tech Vice President Jen Yi-Jun conferred a Certificate of Appreciation to Clevo Vice Chairman Tsai Ming-Hsien to express gratitude to Clevo for supporting innovative talent cultivation and for providing valuable internship opportunities to students.

Tsai indicated that Clevo started their first collaboration with Taipei Tech on a summer internship program last year at their Buynow flagship store in Shanghai. The subject of the internship program rolled out by Clevo and Taipei Tech this year, however, is on the planning for a new retail mall inside the Taipei Twin Towers. In 2019, Clevo was granted the rights to implement the Taipei Twin Towers project and to develop the site, with construction expected to finish in 2026. Tsai encouraged students to base their new retail branding strategy and innovative services for the Twin Towers in relation to the concept of smart mall and culture inheritance. He also gave high praises to the final products of the students’ creative ideas.

The orientation and internship competition of the program were conducted by Taipei Tech Innovation and Incubation Center through live streaming and had accumulated more than 1,000 viewers. 9 students from Taipei Tech, National Chengchi University, National Cheng Kung University and National Sun Yat-sen University as well as 2 exchange students from Fachhochschule Potsdam University of Applied Sciences were selected to be the participants of the internship program, co-instructed by Wang Sheng-Ming, professor at Taipei Tech Department of Interaction Design, and a supervisor from Clevo. “The pandemic has accentuated the importance of new retail mode,” said Professor Wang, “It is more about selling experiences instead of products nowadays”.

Wang Yu-Chen, Taipei Tech Department of Interaction Design student noted that when conceiving the development plan for Taipei Twin Towers, the biggest challenge is to take the 500-thousand daily commuting population into account as the buildings will be built over the top of the Taipei Main Station. How to integrate the shopping district with nearby historic sites is another problem that needs to be solved when developing the design concept. The students who participated in the 2-month internship program had conducted field research, brand positioning and branded app analysis to finally generate a social network-oriented project that applies innovative application service. In addition, students from Taipei Tech Department of Interaction Design had utilized Web VR technology as an innovative service by constructing an official page via Line Bot and adding a feature of regional navigation. By so doing, they are able to create a mechanism for multi-person interaction in virtual reality applications. The project paper had been presented at several conferences and seminars, and had won second place of the DEMO Paper Award category at the 2020 IEEE International Conference on Consumer Electronics-Taiwan.