Street Food HK:An e-guidebook to Hong Kong’s street food culture.

Pansy HuiResearch summaryEmily Carr UniversityInteraction Design1399 Johnston StreetVancouver, BC V6H 39R Canadapthui@ecuad.ca

IntroductionStreet food has become a unique representation of Hong Kong’s well-known street culture. It is local and authentic; it is a distinctive aspect reflecting Hong Kong’s past while following current culture. In addition, being under British rule from the 50’s to the 90’s explains how Western culture is embedded into its history and continues to influence its society today, hence Hong Kong’s iconic East-Meets-West culture. Efforts have been made to preserve old Hong Kong traditions and culture as seen in their festivities and architecture; yet Hong Kong is constantly under rapid modernization and Western influence.

For my thesis project, my design solution would be based on exploring Hong Kong’s street culture through street food from a local’s perspective, and to translate this knowledge to tourists traveling to Hong Kong from Western countries. This e-guidebook aims to preserve the traditional as-pect of Hong Kong street food through educating the general public about its history, recommending tourists to existing examples of both traditional and current street food, and to potentially prolong the life of disappearing street food culture by extending its existence in an ebook. Inspired by the recently growing market for street food carts in Vancouver, it struck me that Hong Kong has had street food for decades but there are no guides introducing this cultural aspect of Hong Kong to tourists. There are exist-ing apps in North America introducing street food carts; however, a guide to Hong Kong’s street food is not available in the market yet. I want to be

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Existing travel magazines (print publications)Brief research into existing print travel magazines would help me get a generalized sense of the kind of content in a tourist guidebook. Also, I want to observe how they set up the “mood” to travel for their fellow travel enthusiasts. One thing I have observed already while skimming through these magazines is that they lure their readers in with large beautiful imageries of travel destinations much like how images in food magazines would cause readers to become hungry. I have looked into four different popular travel magazines for guidance:

Conde Nast Traveler

Phaidon Wallpaper* City Guide

National Geographic Traveler

Travel + Leisure

The Conde Nast Traveler is a luxury travel magazine that relies heavily on full-page, full-spread images. Its layout and choice in typefaces are elegant and minimalistic. Their targeted audiences are upper class people, which are basically those who can afford to travel luxuriously, business people, and middle-aged retirees. The content features five-star destinations and hotels and its images are usually of beach and island getaways.

able to create a readily available tourists’ guide that could introduce, at the very basic level, the common street foods of Hong Kong. Street food can be found anywhere in the streets of Hong Kong and this e-guidebook can be a convenient and useful tool for tourists spending the majority of their time walking on the streets.

Designing for convenience and mobility, the design will be in the form of an ebook for the iPhone, as tourists would most likely be traveling on foot with their mobile devices more so than with an iPad.

The areas of research will include (but is not limited to): · Existing travel magazines (print publications)

· Interesting travel app concepts

· Hong Kong Tourism Board’s existing apps

· Existing North American apps for tracking street food carts

· Common street foods in Hong Kong (Ingredients / How it’s prepared)

· History of Hong Kong street food culture

· The last 28 dai pai dong’s in Hong Kong

· Distinct street food offered across each district in Hong Kong

Hopefully, Street Food HK could serve as a handy guidebook for tourists wishing to experience local Hong Kong street food as well as a portal for tourists wishing to learn about the history behind this culinary experience and its role in shaping Hong Kong culture.

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Recently, Travel + Leisure has been putting more effort into their magazine design. They are more conscious about their typefaces and layouts than before; however, theyir identity does not seem as established as the previ-ous three magazines mentioned.

Interesting travel app conceptsI researched into the kinds of interactions and functions incorporated in upcoming travel app concepts to make it “interesting”.

WWMD (What Would MacGyver Do)

This app assists people in getting out of sticky situations during their vacation. It would ask the user to enter the items they currently have with them and to describe the situation that they need to overcome. WWMD will find a solution for them.

Bedbug Detector

This is a more advanced app, which incorporates a heat map so that bedbugs are represented in red once the mobile device is hovered over the bed.

The Haggler

For shopping tourists, this app would help suggest a fair, local price when bargaining. It will also suggest some phrass to use during the bargaining process.

Phaidon has always been known for its simplicity. There are no fancy grids, layouts, and typefaces and its Wallpaper* City Guide is not an exception. It is published as a series of small books, each with a different colour for dif-ferent city. Unlike Conde Nast Traveler, its style is quite contemporary.

National Geographic Traveler relies heavily on imageries as well. Because it’s National Geographic, it’s also known to be rooted towards educating and exposing its readers to places and things in the world that they have not seen befoe. It inspires its readers to become more daring and adventur-ous. This magazine is all about adventure and discovery and it is for those who do their research before getting to their destination.

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Discover HK · City Walks

This app also uses AR technology to help tourists find places to visit. There are four categories, or “themed walks”: Arhitecture, Time, Living Culture, and City Life.

City Walks is easily navigable and I really like the scrollingof the different tourist attractions. This app presents

just the right amount of information.

Discover HK · 720º

Unique from the above mentioned two apps, this app offers virtual tours of the several key attractions in Hong Kong. Videos are embedded into the app for a multimedia approach.

The Consul Finder

They say that finding a friendly consul to get a tourist visa can sometimes get hectic. This app tells the user the location of the most “friendly” consulate in the region when they enter their nationality, the country to which they are trying to get a tourist visa, and where they are currently located.

Mini Taser

This is a gentle mobile weapon for unwanted people during vacation. It would have two settings: the subtle and the brutal.

Street Food Sleuth

For tourists who want to experience street food without having to worry about having a bad stomach after, this app helps scan street food for para-sites and bacteria.

You’re Off Track

This app makes the mobile device buzz/ring, notifying the user in case they are off track during an adventure.

Hong Kong Tourism Board’s existing appsIn addition to the above apps I have mentioned, I have also looked into a few of the apps produced under the Hong Kong Tourism Board. I want to take note of the expectations, criteria, and content of existing Hong Kong tourism apps, especially the kinds of interactions they have embedded such as AR (Augmented Reality) technology.

Discover HK · AR

Using AR (Augmented Reality) technology, it enables the phone’s cam-era to scan its surroundings, recognize it, and will provide information on where and what the user is looking at. On top of this, the content is available offline so that tourists can view the app’s contents without a data plan and they do not have to look for Wi-Fi services.

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Existing North American street food appsThis area of research is particularly interesting because it allows me to compare and contrast the definition of street food between North Ameri-can culture and Hong Kong culture. Doing research in this area has helped me realize that street food in North America is served in carts while street food in Hong Kong are sold in small stores, which in some way implies that street food in Hong Kong is more established and the market for it is stable because street food in Hong Kong is so abundant, popular, and well-known. I think that the idea of carts is more temporal and its presence depends on the matter of trend. The demand for street food is driven by locals who travel and have experienced the street food culture in other cities and want to experience this similar street culture in North America as well. Tourists, wave of immigrants, and multiculturalism also drives the demand of street food carts. An example would be the current street food trucks around Vancouver serving not traditional foods of Vancouver, but fusion food, which reflects Vancouver’s multicultural society.

Hong Kong initially sold street food in carts; however, due to increasingly strict regulations being implemented into street food and eventually ban-ning street food carts from the streets, it is now sold in small stores. Now, North America is introducing the mobile food culture in an effort to bring vividness to street life and culture. Researching into this topic has also helped me realize that street food trucks in North America, with hot dog stands as an exception, experience less competition because each truck serves their own specialty food, whereas the carts in Hong Kong would all serve similar food, all trying to perfect the same foods and to sell them out in very competitive prices. Locals would go search for carts who are either especially good at making a particular food item or are especially low-priced. Part of the street food culture comes from this curiosity-driven, search-and-discover attitude and it is partially why street food in Hong Kong is so dynamic.

Discover HK · Local Delicacies

This is an e-guidebook that introduces the basic dishes of Hong Kong cuisine and sorts them into four categories: congee, rice noodles, noodles, rice. It recommends restaurants that serves these dishes; however, it could be possible that restaurants pay for getting themselves featured on the app. This app, hence, seems to benefit large, chain restaurant businesses more so than to promote the traditional, down-to-earth small Hong Kong eateries that are essentially cultural relics.

Although the graphics are not all that great, I really like theirspinning wheel in the table of contents page - an e-guidebook becomesless linear that way. I also appreciate their sound clip function for each

food, informing and educating tourists the name of the dish.

Discover HK · Food & Wine Pairing

This app attempts to cater to Westerners by recommending Chinese food that could be paired up with wine.

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History of Hong Kong street food cultureFor the history section of the e-guidebook, I plan to create a multimedia timeline in which the information will be supported by these two articles:

Cultural Heritage in Hong Kong: The Rise of Activism and the Contradictions of

Identity by Sebastian Veg -This article touches briefly on how activism has changed and shaped Hong Kong. Such topics of debate revolve mainly around modernization versus preservation of cultural relics and tradition. An instance would be bringing down old architecture to construct new apartment complexes. As explained in the article, Hong Kong seems to be battling between two contradictive social ideology - rapid modernization and cultural preserva-tion.

The Rise and Fall of Cooked Food Stalls’ Agglomerations by Rita Yi Man Li -In this article, I will find the history of how street food carts all began and why it existed. This article is useful because it provides dates (years) for all major events that occurred and I could use those dates for the timeline. It also highlights the transition from traditional dai pai dongs, a casual outdoor eating environment, to the current street food stores. I also like how this article stresses the significance of these dai pai dongs as a cultural relic and their disappearing presence in Hong Kong is affecting its street culture as well.

Common street foods in Hong KongLists of top and most common street foods to try in Hong Kong could be found in websites such as CNNGo and food blogs in particular. Food blogs tend to document people’s experience towards this street food culture as well and how they interpret these food.

Another research source is to ask locals in Hong Kong for their recom-mendations on what tourists should try out in order to experience the taste of Hong Kong. I could ask relatives in Hong Kong for input.

Some existing North American apps for tracking street food trucks include:

Food Truck Fiesta

This app tracks trucks on a live map using Twitter feeds. The Twitter feed for each truck is revealed when the user clicks on the truck.

Eat St.

On top of being able to track trucks on a map, the relationship between the truck owners and their customers is drawn closer because food truck owners to update their own locations, menus, hours of operation, and customize their “restaurant” profiles through the Eat St. database.Advantage: Food truck owners can customize profile.

Roaming Hunger

This app uses tweets and calendars to keep track of street food trucks on a map. It also categorizes the street food into three categories: savory, sweet, and vegetarian. Users can also plan ahead by searching only for trucks that are open.Advantage: Food categories available.

Road Stoves GPS

Using GPS, this app is the most accurate in terms of tracking street food trucks around town; however, it is the most sparse in terms of the variet-ies of food trucks because not every truck is GPS-enabled. It is easy to access Twitter feeds and menus of other trucks, but it does not put them on the map.Advantage: GPS tracking accuracy

Trux Map Lite

This app locates trucks near the user that are open for business. It also utilizes Twitter feeds to track and plot locations. Users can request new trucks to be added into the app.

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Citations

“Condé Nast Traveler Articles, Blogs, Videos, Lists, and Polls on Concierge.com.” Travel Guides,

Hotel Reviews, Vacation Ideas, and Trip-Planning Tools at Concierge.com. Web. 03 Nov. 2011. <http://www.concierge.com/cntraveler/>.

“IPhone - Hong Kong Tourism Board.” Hong Kong Tourism Board. Web. 03 Nov. 2011. <http:// www.discoverhongkong.com/eng/jsp/mobile-app/iphone.jsp>.

Kessler, Sarah. “5 Mobile Apps for Finding Food Trucks in Your Area.” Mashable. 30 June 2011. Web. 03 Nov. 2011. <http://mashable.com/2011/06/30/food-truck-apps/>.

Li, Rita YM. “Rise and Fall of Cooked Food Stalls Agglomeration.” (2010): 1-16. We Love Hong

Kong. Web. 3 Nov. 2011. <http://www.welovehkasso.com/welovehkhist/ thesis/2010/0104le.pdf>.

“National Geographic Traveler Magazine.” Travel & Cultures -- National Geographic. Web. 03 Nov. 2011. <http://travel.nationalgeographic.com/travel/traveler-magazine/>.

Noll, Daniel. “Travel Apps of Our Dreams | Uncornered Market.” Uncornered Market | Around

the World Travel Blog and Photos. Web. 03 Nov. 2011. <http://www.uncornered market.com/2011/08/travel-apps-wish-list/>.

World Travel Guides, Articles, and Information | Travel + Leisure. Web. 03 Nov. 2011. <http:// www.travelandleisure.com/>.

“Wallpaper* City Guides | Phaidon Apps.” Agenda | Phaidon. Web. 03 Nov. 2011. <http:// ca.phaidon.com/travel/>.

Veg, Sebastian. “Cultural Heritage in Hong Kong.” (2007): 46-48. The French Centre for Research on Contemporary China (CEFC). Web. 3 Nov. 2011. <http://www.cefc. com.hk/uf/file/Paul/CP2007-2SVHeritage.pdf>.

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