Start Date
6-10-2025 9:00 AM
End Date
8-10-2025 7:00 PM
Description
In the context of declining sustainability in traditional placemaking practices, this study explores how transmedia storytelling, when integrated with service design logic, can function as a replicable and adaptive mechanism for community activation. Grounded in a media–platform–role framework, this research takes Alipay’s Life as Theater project as a case study to examine how narrative-driven tasks, distributed media touchpoints, and platform-mediated coordination work together to mobilize user participation. Through service design analysis, it identifies how digital platforms serve as both structural orchestrators and narrative translators, aligning user behaviors, merchant interactions, and platform logic into a coherent activation pathway. This study contributes to current literature by advancing a model of mechanism-driven engagement that emphasizes low-threshold participation, scalable design, and stakeholder co-creation. The findings suggest that transmedia storytelling can serve not only as a content strategy but also as an infrastructural logic for participatory service systems in community contexts.
Citation
Zhong, S., Li, W., Hu, F.,and Xu, H.(2025) Activating Community Through Transmedia Storytelling: A Service Design Case Study of the Life as Theater Project.. https://dl.designresearchsociety.org/servdes/servdes2025/researchpapers/31
Activating Community Through Transmedia Storytelling: A Service Design Case Study of the Life as Theater Project
In the context of declining sustainability in traditional placemaking practices, this study explores how transmedia storytelling, when integrated with service design logic, can function as a replicable and adaptive mechanism for community activation. Grounded in a media–platform–role framework, this research takes Alipay’s Life as Theater project as a case study to examine how narrative-driven tasks, distributed media touchpoints, and platform-mediated coordination work together to mobilize user participation. Through service design analysis, it identifies how digital platforms serve as both structural orchestrators and narrative translators, aligning user behaviors, merchant interactions, and platform logic into a coherent activation pathway. This study contributes to current literature by advancing a model of mechanism-driven engagement that emphasizes low-threshold participation, scalable design, and stakeholder co-creation. The findings suggest that transmedia storytelling can serve not only as a content strategy but also as an infrastructural logic for participatory service systems in community contexts.