Venue
National Design Centre
Home of the DesignSingapore Council, in the heart of the city
Work Singapore Design Week 2024
Singapore Design Week is one of Asia’s leading design festivals. In 2024 it drew over 190,000 visitors and more than 700 designers and creatives over 11 days.
GrabMaps took part to show how mapping and location intelligence shape better experiences, places and decisions across Southeast Asia.
The challenge
A small room under fluorescent white light, and a design crowd that doesn’t expect much from a mapping company.
Space: a confined room, about as far from an inspiring gallery as you can get. Perception: we wanted to show Grab’s design-first approach to building products, and make complex geospatial tech feel accessible.
The big idea
A room full of designers wants to see the thinking. So rather than listing what the camera does, we walked people through how it came to be: the early concept sketches, the industrial design decisions, the AI behind its mapmaking, and the drivers and riders who carry it every day.
I spent time with Grab’s Product Design team to learn the process first-hand, so the room could celebrate the engineering and the design side by side.

The plan
We planned the space around its limits. Every element had one job: to move visitors from the door to the hardware, and to make them want to look closer.


three ideas to guide the way



The recap
The hardware was the hero, and a festival crowd found a mapping company telling a design story.
Watch the film on YouTube
Output
Grab featured the exhibition on its own site, putting its design process in the spotlight for 190,000+ festival visitors and 700+ designers and creatives.
Venue
Home of the DesignSingapore Council, in the heart of the city