Innovative Design on Public Drinking Water Service

Abstract

This research intends to develop a new creative service design for providing drinking water through water dispensers Water is essential in our lives Adequate and regular water consumption helps regulate bodily functions and is beneficial to keep healthy In order to meet the public demand for drinking water water dispensers are provided at many public spaces such as schools libraries and museums but not at the outdoor location Besides regular maintenance of water dispensers is not an easy task Setting water dispensers in appropriate areas and avoiding vandalism also influence the number of public water dispensers These make the decrease in the number of public water dispensers and lead to the inconvenience of access to public drinking water The following objectives are proposed in this research to improve the public drinking water supply: 1 To explore the potential needs of drinking water services from users’ perspective 2 To evaluate the feasibility of implementing drinking water services from service providers’ perspective 3 To develop a possible drinking water service for the public A preliminary study is conducted in the research to understand people’s attitude toward water dispensers and its substitute bottled water Afterwards an initial drinking water service is proposed based on the preliminary study This drinking water service is used as a probe to detect potential problems that may arise Through interviewing the possible stakeholders in the initial drinking water service the obtained opinions are summed up and discussed through a focus group interview Based on the focus group discussion outcome the initial drinking water service is revised to a new drinking water service model Finally the new drinking water service model is evaluated through interviewing the stakeholders again According to the results of the evaluation on the new drinking water service model five important key points worth to be considered when providing a drinking water service are as follows: 1 provision of a simple and user-friendly service 2 benefits for service providers and service receivers 3 the added value of the service -learning and the acquisition of new knowledge 4 consciousness of greening and environmental protection 5 pricing This research hopes to improve the current drinking water service and try to provide a feasible solution for both service providers and service receivers The opinions and suggestions from stakeholders on the new drinking water service model can be a reference for future development of drinking water service for the public

Date of Award	2017 Aug 16
Original language	English
Supervisor	Meng-Dar Shieh (Supervisor)