What makes shoes become shoes?
Referring to Maslow's hierarchy of needs, I analyzed the hierarchy of funcitons of shoes. The most fundamental function of shoes should be isolate the sole with the ground. When the sole isolation is connected to the foot, people can walk with the sole, which makes the structure become shoes. In order to walk more comfortably, people required the buffer. If they want to walk in harsh walking condition, they may want their feet surfaces isolated from adverse environmental factors like water, dust and sand.

Reflecting to the observation result that many tourists would carry more than one shoes on their tour and wear different shoes based on the walking condition. On a harsh muddy path, people would like to wear waterproof walking boot. On a cozy wood walkway, people would like to wear sandals to refresh their feet. In carbin, they would wear flip flops for rest. Modular concept would be a good design principle for designing travel shoes.

4x module units:
Four functional module units: a outsole, a insole, a self-storage waterproof surface, and a cross strap.

3x wearing modes:
Three wearing modes: professional walking mode, casual walking mode, and easy walking mode.

Styling:
With the development of social media, one of the most important travel behaviors is sharing pictures instantly on the tour. People are paying more attention to their dressing for travel. By analyzing the current style of city outfit, my styling keywords are Wrapping, Concise, and Sense of function.

Self-storage design of the surfaces:
Considering that the unloading part may impose an unnecessary burden on the traveler, I designed a self-stroage structure. The detached surfaces can be folded and put into the inner pockets so that the surfaces can be attached onto the rear rings of the shoes.