1. Brainstorming themes

We gathered together to brainstorm ideas for the digital artifact. Everyone came up with a list of themes that spoke to them from looking at the painting. We later discussed these together and tried to extrapolate some contextual information for both the people in the painting to support our ideas and themes. A recurring theme we all thought of was of growing up as a first or second-generation person of color in a predominantly white setting, far from our native countries and cultures.


All the members of our team come from different countries, and that only helped us in having a productive discussion as we were able to bring our own unique experiences to the table. We talked about how living far from one’s friends and family in a drastically different culture can be quite isolating sometimes. Festivals, customs and other parts of one’s daily life are quickly replaced with the humdrum of the country they reside in, making it difficult and alienating for people to navigate this mixed identity. This discussion formed the core of our design and we kept coming back to it to guide our final design decisions.

2. Ideating

Having settled on the problem space, we sat about discussing specific pain points that we could address with a digital product. One of the first ideas we discussed was around building a community for people of color to interact amongst themselves, share stories and attend events together - a space for them that’s just their own. However, we quickly realized that while this was a great idea, existing social media platforms had already managed to create something similar. A popular example being Reddit where users could create specific subreddits to talk about shared interests, identities, experiences etc.

While bouncing off a few other similar ideas, we went back to talking about the subjects in the picture. We discussed how difficult it must be for first-generation immigrants to raise children in a different country, while also trying to inculcate and preserve the children’s understanding of their native cultures. And that gave way to our main idea.

3. The Idea

We decided to target parents with young kids as our primary users.


We envisioned a social-media-esque platform that would help parents reconnect with their roots and cultural milieu and introduce their children to the same, in a fun, interactive manner.


Here’s a rundown of all the features -


  1. The main feature of the app would be the “Activity for the Week” feature. This would have a simple activity that parents and children could do together, such as making laddoos for Diwali or going grocery shopping at a regional supermarket. The activities would be no-frills, engaging, and rarely elaborate so that they can be weaved into one’s schedule and do not feel like a task. These activities would help parents introduce their native culture to children in an easygoing and fun way.

  2. Users can also create their own activities and post about them on their profiles. These can include nuggets of stories, memories, trivia, etc. from their own lives that the app creators/moderators would then vet and compile into newer activities for other users.

  3. Users can also see events and fundraisers happening around them relevant to their community.

  4. Users can also access Regional Calendars


Additionally, the onboarding will require the user to choose their ethnicity, age, and interests as well as declare if they will be using it for themselves or with their families as the activities being recommended will change accordingly.

4. User Flow Diagram (Tentative)

5. Lo-fi screens

We made lo-fi screens for two flows - Onboarding and Homepage

Onboarding

Introduction page with a carousel explaining the app's functionality

Login Page

Creating account page

Users can choose multiple options to account for multi-cultural backgrounds

User can specify if they're using the app for themself alone or with their family

User specifies their own and family members' ages

User chooses initial topics for the app to base its recommendations on

Homepage

Home Page that highlights Activity of the Week and a quick glance at sub-categories

Alternative for the Home Page

All categories of activities that the user can explore

List of individual activities within those categories

Detailed descriptions of the individual activity along with actionable steps

Step-wise instructions to complete the activity

6. Challenges we encountered (and perhaps again will)

  • Just another social media? - While the aim was to create a community, we are wary of creating a social media platform that’s largely content-driven like most other platforms these days. We want to focus on, quite literally, the “social” part of social media. Currently, we feel we’ve thought out the features to some reasonable extent so as to avoid any pitfalls.

  • What sets us apart? - We went back and forth numerous times to ensure we’re creating something that is not an exact repetition of what already existed. With every new feature we thought of, we had to brainstorm platforms that were doing it in the same or somewhat different manner, and accordingly tweak our features so we don’t spend time reinventing the wheel.

Milestone 2: Lo-fi Prototype
Brief - Create a lofi prototype of a digital artifact to satisfy some need of one of the two people in the painting below
Still You Bloom in This Land of No Gardens, 2020. Njideka Akunyili Crosby

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