Connect the Dots
design research | service design | 4 member team | new york city, usa | 2019
Overview
Connect the dots is a service to initiate the first social connection in a new city, sustain and grow your social capital. The platform matches a newcomer to a buddy in the city. The pair connect with each other through curated experiences and eventually have the option to meet other newcomers.
The Challenge:
The project brief was to create a business product or service that helps urbanites live a more balanced life.
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Approach:
We approached this project with an open and explorative mind. Starting with brainstorming from our own experiences we arrived at "sense of belonging" as a broad area of research for this project. Using surveys and interviews we tried to understand what it means to belong to a city. Both qualitative and quantitative research was conducted to map various patterns surrounding this topic. After arriving at our insight and HMW question, we ideated using the bad idea - good idea process and arrived at our solution.
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Solution:
Connect the Dots - A service that initiates the first meeting for a newcomer to a city with a buddy. Further allowing them to form a social circle through curated experiences.
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Learning Outcome:
I went through a huge learning curve to grasp research skills that were previously not in my comfort zone. I learnt tools that help to understand users better, business values, and opportunities. I explored new ways of prototyping and testing.
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My Role:
I was a part of the design research and service design process, with extra focus on:
Process facilitation - Facilitating the design process and transitions between different stages in the design journey
Visual Design - Creating visual artifacts of the research and prototypes.
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DESIGN RESEARCH
Sense of Belonging
STAKEHOLDERS ECOSYSTEM
To understand the variables that affect the sense of belonging through the lens of different user groups. We did this to understand how different elements play a role in different potential users.
SURVEY
90+ responses
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Our research began with surveys that explored what belonging meant to people. Interviews with native New Yorkers and Newcomers to the city were conducted to understand how belonging is different to these user groups.
Do you feel like you belong to the city you currently live in?
Narrowing our user group
INSIGHT #1
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A large section of the urban population are not native to the city. People move for education or work. Young adults are most likely to move frequently. Presently, Gen Y & Z are on the move.
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Therefore, we decided to focus on Gen Y & Z for the rest of the process.
INTERVIEWS
12 in-depth interviews were conducted to better understand what it means to feel a sense of belonging. We explored the psychology of belonging, the process of moving, and the different ways in which people interact in the city.
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Our context being New York City, we interviewed Native New Yorkers as well to understand what might be the gap that newcomers face in a city.
INSIGHT #2
Because of the transient nature of interactions in cities, people don’t want to invest time/energy/effort in relationships that are not likely to last. Barriers to belongingness in a city - transience, lack of time, transactional.
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We decided to create personas and journey maps of people in the city to understand their life, routines, and relationships.
Sensemaking
PERSONAS
A DAY IN THE LIFE OF GEORGE
Through the interviews and journey maps we were able to define what belonging means:
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Belonging can be defined at two levels.
At a personal level, it means a feeling of trust and shared values between a group of people who experience the freedom to be themselves without the fear of judgment based on common values and beliefs.
In a city, belonging refers to knowing the unwritten nuances of the place, its pulse, and sense of familiarity with everyday routine or people one comes across
INSIGHT #3
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Millennials are constantly on the move, and being new to a city, they feel the loss of their social circle. They are in the process of exploring this new place and culture whilst also being a stranger to everyone in the city.
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The next step was to understand in detail the process of moving to a new city and finding a sense of belonging.
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PROCESS OF BELONGING
This framework for the process of belonging was created and through this we identified that users have to be engaged during the "Orientation phase" to ensure that there there is a smoother transition to creating social connections.
IDEATION
Brainstorming & Bad Ideas
We used brainwriting and mind mapping to come up with the different shortcomings newcomers face in the Orientation Phase. By silently clustering them we arrived at major factors that affect the orientation phase and the jobs-to-be-done.
JOBS TO BE DONE
VALUE MAP
How Might We..
We narrowed in on the problem space - the loss of social capital when one moves to a new city. To direct ideation we framed the question -
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How Might We propel millennial newcomers into taking the first step and
rebuilding their social network?
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By ideating for the worst ideas, and then turning them into the best ideas, we arrived at 4 potential directions:
City Buddy
Connect people with a ‘city buddy’ in their neighborhood who is willing to show them around the city, explain the unsaid norms of the place, and get them ‘oriented’.
Value Match
A platform where users fill out a survey about their values and behaviors to match with people that complement them.
Social Hotspots
Social Hotspots are areas in any city that are more conducive to socializing and meeting new people. Identify ‘hotspots’ through research and create a map to help new migrants find them.
Exploring the Unknown
A platform that connects people based on possible interests where the skill level is equal for everyone, zero, and hosting challenging experiences in the spirit of exploring and discovering something new.
Connect the Dots
SERVICE STORYBOARD
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Combining a few ideas and additional thoughts which emerged from ideation, we created "Connect the dots". To make sense of the service journey that the user takes, a storyboard was created. This also acted as a low-fi prototype.
We took initial feedback on the experience through interviews after presenting this journey to potential users.
EXPERIENCE PROTOTYPE & USER TESTING
Walking the Journey with the User
SIGN UP POSTERS
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To test if our users would be interested in a service like this these posters were circulated. We recorded the responses to further understand the needs of the users.
CALL FOR BUDDIES
“I like helping people and on top of it gives me a chance to explore at the same time”
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“For sure” “I didn’t have a guide”
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“I was in a similar situation a few years back, so I know how it feels”
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“I do a similar program at work. Mentor program in NY.”
CALL FOR NEWCOMERS
“The writing and other people who are looking to connect makes me interested”
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“I would be very interested if it’s not just one event.”
“Maybe not pay for it but if it is contribute what you feel like, I would in the second visit.”
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“Oh yes! That’ll be fun”
PAIRED EXPLORATION - EXPERIENCE TEST
We designed an interactive experience to test our assumptions. We invited an existing pair of acquaintances consisting of a newcomer and a fairly settled city dweller for the test.
A museum visit was planned for the pair and their interaction was observed to understand if such experiences make any difference.
From our tests, we could see that the service would really help newcomers begin to make their first connections in the city. The experience test at the museum showed us that two strangers could comfortably hang out in such spaces as opposed to forced interactions at coffee shops or restaurants. A mobile application would be required to create this first few connections and further use it for keeping in touch with other newcomers to the city.
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