A design thinking workshop aimed at improving the experience of Kortrijk's city center resulted in innovative concepts to attract visitors and enhance navigation. Key findings showed that many visitors are unaware of the city's historical and cultural attractions, with the 'k' shopping center dominating foot traffic. Proposed strategies include pop-up information points, color navigation systems, and a green corridor to guide pedestrians, ultimately aiming to create a more inviting and integrated city environment.

1. The Future of the City
Improving city center experience

2. Design Thinking training was organized by “Flanders
Inshape” and “Wonderfull” design thinking and cre-
ative intelligence lab as an open event for creative
practitioners and experts.
30 people participated, including a team of coaches
and facilitators.
1-day challenge for improving city center planning.
8 hours of intense research and idea generation

4. The Challenge
“How might we improve people
experience at the Kortrijk city
center pedestrian zone?”

5. Participants focused on the area “with the foun-
tains” at the crossroads of Korte Steenstraat and
Lange Steenstraat.
Focus of the Challenge

6. Observation
During the workshop participants undertook several
research activities:
Interviews with Shop Owners, Citizens, Tourists and
City Administration representatives
Photo-ethnography at the city center
Sketching and prototyping of the final decisions

7. Interviews

8. Photo
ethnography

9. Sketching
and
prototyping

10. Key Findings
The “K” shopping center is the main point for attract-
ing city visitors for shopping (at the city center).
Satellite street shop owners are interested in a higher
number of potential clients visiting the shops.
Kortrijk tourists and visitors from other towns know
little about the Kortrijk city center, history and archi-
tecture.
The focus crossroads at Korte Steenstraat and Lange
Steenstraat is used as a place to meet up, leave a bike
or just to sit.

11. Problem formulation
Through the observation participants found several
problems in the area:

12. Most people are going directly to the “K” shopping center, completely
unaware about other attractive areas of the city.
There are no navigation clues at “K” about “what is located all around
to watch and sightseen or shop more” (quote from the interview)

13. The crossroads is not supplied by information stand to
navigate people through historical center.
Entrances to the historical center are barely visible. They
looks like a dead end.

14. The crossroads with the fountains doesn’t give people an
opportunity to perform common actions at the place
(park a bike conveniently, place an information about the
local event or meet up)
By the last reason, the fountain crossroads doesn’t seem
“aesthetically pleasant” (quote from the interview)

15. Concept Development
Through research and team working, using Design
Thinking approach, participants came to three deci-
sions:
Fortrijk concept
Pop-up to meet-up concept
Color navigation concept

16. Fortrijk The Fortrijk concept was based on interviews with Kortrijk citizens. One of the
findings was, that they miss their “original” city and its typical small-town atmo-
sphere. We combined this with the effect of the K Mall, minimizing the city centre
into a flow of visitors hiking between the parking zone and the mall.
What we did was give the city back to its pedestrians, sending cars to an external
parking zone, create a small-town atmosphere by setting up city walls and medie-
val architectural elements. And most of all, create a Green Corridor that runs
through the city centre, spontaneously guiding visitors through the city and reveal
its hidden gems. By defining a specific start/end with an tourist information
counter located near the K Mall, the chance of catching the attention of all visitors
(shopping/cultural/Belgian/French/Dutch etc.) is high.

18. Depending on the season, special
urban happenings or other evens,
the corridor can be changed in
order to seduce earlier tourists to
return and create a temporary at-
mosphere.

19. Kortrijk has a lot of attractive places, both modern and historical. But few visitors
are aware of it. Main goal of this concept is to help tourists and visitors to be
aware of what is going on in the city of Kortrijk.
There are several routes in Kortrijk visitors could take if they knew about it. It
could be history road, shopping road or, may be, restaurant or pub road. They all
worth spending a weekend there. And to help people find this routes we could take
several steps.
First, routes should be clearly marked in the city space. Second, visitors could use
app that lists those routes. And third, most important, mobile visitors information
points should be placed at the key points.
Pop-up to
meet-up

20. Beer road History roadShopping road

21. Pop-up points are very flexible,
functional and non expensive. They
could be relocated during the city
events, or removed if there are few
visitors to the city.
Mobile points could guide tourists,
announce city events or work as
kiosks with souvenirs or refresh-
ments.

22. Visible
points
Main point of this concept is to create grid of simple attractive places an the city
center. Placed in direct visibility from one to another, those places will invite tour-
ist and citizens to explore. New visitors will never get lost as they will always be
able to navigate back to the visible points they passed. And using those points to
making appointments will be handy for citizens.

24. Unique, simple and easy, points of
interests will provide some very
basic entertainment functionality.
And work as reference points for
people taking a walk at the city
center.
"Let's meet near the flower in fif-
teen minutes, ok?"

25. And some ideas
from wonder-full team:

26. For now "K" interior and city
center are completely separat-
ed. It could not be the case.
People are going to "K" anyway
- could we integrate city center
in that behavior?
For instance, inner navigation in
"K" could point out to city
center. And navigation in the
center could point to both "K"
and historical building.
And to integrate history and K
further, mock-up of city land-
scape in the "K" could be build.
It will invite visitors to explore
Kortrijk. Plus those giant
screens in "K" could display
some information about city.

27. Thank you for your time!