Transcript
Have you ever been to any malls in hong kong after the Covid-19 pandemics broke out? Malls faced various difficulties at the peak of the breakout. But nowadays, malls are not so different compared to pre-COVID situations and still have many visitors. Except, there are some changes. Malls now “control” their visitors to control the situation. At IFC mall, one of Hong Kong’s most iconic malls, you can easily find signs like this along with a hand sanitizer near each entrance. Throughout the mall, there are also signs to wear masks or avoid crowdedness. The mall also makes visitors keep social distance when forming lines. As so, the mall “control” the visitors’ actions.
in fact, to have better control over the flow of people, each shop has more signs and requires visitors to use the leave home safe app or write their information. Some also have digital thermometers for self-temperature checks or have workers with thermometers like this apple store does. The interesting thing is that the degree of control differs depending on the characteristic of the shop. Food and drink related shops control their visitors the most. this is obviously due to the characteristic of the shops where customers having to take off their masks. shops keep track of their visitors through the app and have vacated tables to encourage social distance. They also have plastic shields between each table. On the other hand, shops without such control were often fashion-related. when they take control, they often focused more on hand hygiene over temperature. this is probably since customers keep their masks on but touch the products. The form of control differs from store to store. but it is clear for all ways that the mall is trying to take some control of their customers to prevent the spread of the virus.
Synopsis
I tried to investigate how the IFC Mall took control of the current COVID 19 situations. The leave home safe app usage encouragement signs, thermometers, and hand sanitizers were easily found throughout the mall, and I thought this is their way of having control over their visitors. They have control over who enters the mall and individual shops, and also have certain control over hygiene. I also tried to show and discuss how different shops in the mall focus either on temperature or hand hygiene in order to be able to have control over the current situation and prevent the spread of the coronavirus. I took photos of signs from various stores and took videos to show the flow of people within the mall. When documenting shops, I also asked around if I can take some photos or videos. Although I did my best and quite satisfied, I think I could also have done better if not for the difficulties I faced while having to connect to the current COVID situation.
Reference
“Health Advice on Prevention of Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) for Shopping Mall (Interim)”. Centre for Health Protection, Infection Control Branch. April 13. 2021.
Tsang, Denise. “Coronavirus: Hong Kong retail sector warns any cuts to shopping mall opening hours will kill businesses, jobs”. The Coronavirus Pandemic. 14 Jan 2021.
“Hong Kong developer closes mall after coronavirus cluster emerges”. The Straits Times. March 1, 2021.
Stockdill, Robert. “COVID-19 brings heavy drops in Hong Kong retail sales in December”. InsideRetail.asia. February 2, 2021.
All aspects are addressed and presented with competent depth.
Demonstrates an understanding of the fieldwork research, concepts and key issues relating to the topic.
Able to adequately identify the most critical aspects of the place and presents a competently
articulated analysis of the topic. However, I am curious what new insights do you discover during your visit to IFC? How many times did you visit? At what time/s did you visit and how did you decide when and how to document the spaces? How did you curate the journey?
Maintains a good control of narration. Written and verbal articulation, and references are of competent academic standard, and adequately integrated into the overall presentation.