Plattr
Case Study Details
My role
I acted as team leader, screen writer and presentation architect. It was up to me to keep the team on track and our story convincing.
My team
Animesh Gupta, Cayli Chase, Kristin Williams
Tools
XD, Illustrator, Premier, Photoshop. Lightroom
Methods
Literature Review, photo ethnography, external survey, stakeholder review, visual/behavioral prototyping
Timeline
August ‘19 - December ‘19
Design Challenge
Our challenge was to design a passion project that would address the category of respect in an impactful way. Our proposal did not have to be economically viable, but simply needed to be a novel approach to addressing a problem space.
Final Proposal
Story Time
Josh McCoy a construction worker, after watching a documentary about race in america, decided to try and expand his cultural horizons. However, he has little time outside of work and caring for his family.
However, he does have an hour for lunch each day that he gets to leave the work site. One day while scrolling on social media Josh stumbles across an app called Plattr, which allows his to meet up and have lunch with other people who are wanting to explore cultures different from their own.
After his first lunch Josh learned that not only do people of from different races experience life differently, but he also learned quite a bit about himself.
We propose creating cultural respect through shared eating experiences. To achieve this we designed an app:
(Top Screen) Encourage even timid eaters to explore new foods with FlavorSpec, which provides flavor breakdowns through reverse image searching, for any dish.
(Rightmost) Let people explore and join food events around them and provide an outlet for those looking for companionship or education.
(Bottom) Help people visualize where the food events are in relation to their current location, hopefully encouraging more participation
(Leftmost) Customize event suggestions based off of our comprehensive taste survey, as well as past participation.
Research
We began exploring the problem space in order to, understand ourselves, others and the interactions in between.
We started by identifying our predispositions / biases about how we thought cultural empathy is created.
We then conducted a literature review and a photo ethnography to explore how people interact with other cultures.
Our last step before we started designing was to survey how others interact with cultures outside of their own and how the relevant stakeholders interact.
Predispositions
“I tend to gravitate towards other students from my home country because it’s just easier.”
— International graduate student
“I am afraid to try too hard to engage with other cultures because I don’t want to be insensitive.”
— Domestic graduate student
Literature Review
Cultural interaction survey
Largest barriers to understanding other cultures
Lack of access and knowledge are two of the largest barriers.
Most popular forms of cultural engagement
Food is indeed the most popular medium.
Photo Ethnography
Here we see the juxtaposition of two types of the same culture.
Here we see how a Nepalese restaurant has adapted a traditional Bloomington bungalow.
Cultural exchange stakeholders
We created a stakeholder diagram so that we could identify existing connections and where there is space for new connections.
Insights
Considering the diversity of our own group we believe that many of our personal predispositions can be extrapolated.
In order to encourage learning outside of peoples comfort zones, we will need to make entice them with something delightful.
According the journal of psychology shared experiences are vital for the human bonding
Globalization of popular culture could be an already established inroad that we can take advantage of.
Since food is the most popular medium for cultural consumption it could be a powerful tool for helping spread information.
Many restaurants have already created an atmosphere for fostering cultural exchange through, both making their culture accessible and creating familiar alternative dishes.
Generating ideas
Settling on food
During our research phase we tossed around several approaches to addressing our problem space, but after multiple rounds of divergent ideation sessions, we realized that the majority of our favorite ideas revolved around the idea of bringing people together over food.
Winners of round one
FlavorSpec
Uses reverse image search algorithms and flavor spectroscopy techniques to can create an easy to understand flavor profile for any food that you can take a picture of. It also gives examples of familiar foods with similar flavor profiles. Lastly it supplies the cultural significance of the food and how to eat it properly.
Learning Lunch
Participants use this service to connect with other individuals in their vicinity to meet up for lunch and explore new foods and cultures together.
Food Festival
Festival attendees enjoy culturally unique dishes, while watching programs or partaking in events centered around a matching cultural theme.
After doing quick and dirty builds of all three of our winning ideas, we realized that instead of choosing one, we could combine all three and create a service better than any single one could provide. Furthermore, in a bid to be easily accessible and shareable we decided to synthesize all of the ideas in one mobile application.
Behavioral Prototypes
First we set about testing and tweaking the applications flow and features via a series of paper/wizard of oz style prototyping sessions with 5 participants.
Once we were satisfied with the apps functionality we set up a Plattr lunch with our 5 participants to see if we could generate the cultural exchange we set out to to create.
Insights
Sharing food prompted much deeper conversation than what normally was talked about in the studio. Topics including childhood memories of cooking and eating came up frequently.
Exploring new dishes and how their flavor profiles were similar or different from the familiar created great topics for conversation.
Plattr style lunches offer an opportunity to help those experiencing cultural or other forms of isolation.
Next Steps
We believe that our app Plattr will be able to address all of the opportunities that we discovered during our design journey.
There are two possible strategies for implementing Plattr.
Model for the public good:
Would be as a subsidized public service, because this route would allow us to build Plattr into a social infrastructure and have a lasting positive influence. With an ever widening gap between ideological camps, we believe that a top down intervention would be most effective and beneficial.
Profitable model:
Or Plattr could be used to harvest data and sell it to marketing companies, similar to any of the other free service apps.
Videos we enjoyed making
A silent film depicting the unlikely love story of two classmates. Written by Jake Heyerdahl, Starring Animesh Gupta and Jake Heyerdahl
Final video for meaning and forms class. In the form of a 90s infomercial. Written by Jake Heyerdahl, Directed by Kristen Williams, Starring Jake Heyerdahl Animesh Gupta and Cayli Chase.