Preliminary Research

Objectives: to better understand (1) different perspectives on making connections online and in physical space, and (2) what people value in social relationships.

Takeaways:
(1) the majority of surveyors don't have any problems making connections online.
(2) things people value most in relationships:
■ Sharing things in common
■ Understanding in a deeper level
■ Doing activities together
■ Learning about different perspectives

(3) Is there a need or desire to design for human connections and communities?

Secondary Research

What other disciplines explain human connection & sense of community?

[1] Neuroscience: What happens to the nervous system when we connect with others?

We're wired to connect. The prefrontal cortex of the human brain—the social brain—is dedicated to thinking about self and our relationships with others. It is also responsible for personality expression and moderating social behaviors. However, people abandon the social brain when utilizing virtual communication tools, which cannot communicate the eight distinct emotions such as anger, fear, disgust, love, gratitude, sympathy, happiness, and sadness. These emotional languages are important clues to help us understand the context of conversations and allow us to analyze others’ feelings in order to provide appropriate responses. Research shows that we can perceive emotions with 78% accuracy in face-to-face communications. In addition, Sherry Turkle wrote in her book Reclaiming Conversation: The Power of Talk in a Digital Age that those with the most use of social media have difficulty reading human emotions, including their own.

[2] Psychology: How and why we connect?

 1. Acceptance: community members must acknowledge both their similarities and differences. According to Doug Shipman’s principles of a “beloved community,” we must have true respect for otherness and develop the ability to listen with the heart and engage people who are very different from us.

2.Contribution: create opportunities for people to make things together, which Hugh Weber refers as Relationship of Influences (ROI). ROI emphasizes on the idea of building a community where everyone can contribute and receives influences from other.

3. Ownership: in a neighborhood community, ownership is reflected through public shared amenities such as schools, workplaces, groceries store, hospitals, public parks, etc. Research shows that higher amenity community tends to have residents who feel more socially connected with others.

[3] Anthropology: in this section, we’re looking at social-cultural development and its influences on how people connect and build community. This part focuses on three main areas:

2. The Influences of Cultural and Socioeconomic Development on How People Connect With Others and Build Communities
■ Gentrification, the displacement of community and culture, and the divergence of social and economic groups lead to the lack of mix-income neighborhood (place-based community), and equal access to public services, amenities, and business opportunities. The segregation taking place in a city between the high and low incomes create a tension among community members with different religions, beliefs, and values that have caused many more communal issues.
■ “Community Loss”: Leila Mahmoudi Farahani, a Research Fellow at Centre for Urban Research who studies how a neighborhood’s build environment and physical structure’s impacts its livability, sense of community, and the social life of residents, use the term “Community Loss” to describe this change. Non-local and virtual communities, communities of interest and occupation have been replacing place-based community, but it can’t substitute for the neighborhood in the creation of communities.

Research Synthesis

Community Path of Impact
To summarize the research insights, I created a Community’s Path of Impact Diagram. The diagram shows the correlations between different attributes of a community and identifies the areas that can use design to influence how a community is built.

DESIGN APPROACH

■ Engage the community in the design process
■ Educate community members about issues that matter
■ Find a new approach to the solution

THE DESIGN CONCEPT

Know Your Neighbor is an educational board game that can be played with family, friends, and neighbors at gathering occasions. It takes players on a journey of what it is like to be a neighborhood member. Throughout the game, players can get to know and connect with other players as their neighbors, and learn about the functionalities, shared assets, and resources of a neighborhood. The game instructs players to interact and perform daily neighborhood activities with other players, such as volunteer work, community tasks, discussing local issues, collaborating, and being rewarded for their contribution. The board game combines education and entertainment, which aims to inspire action and encourage players to take what they learn and apply it to their daily interactions with the community.

To organize the game’s interaction, I create a list of fundamental components to make up the game mechanics:

The Game Loop: Each player will choose a character with an assigned profession, secret skills, resources, house, and income. While players take turns traveling around their neighborhood using the spinner, they collect resources such as food, produce, garden tools, books, money, and draw action cards that require them to interact and collaborate with their neighbors on community tasks. Players can exchange their tools, discuss and vote on policies, and build community amenities and facilities such as a hospital, school, community garden, playground, skate park, and local businesses.
Tension: Tension in the game is built up when players are required to negotiate with other players to come up with a solution that may affect everyone in the neighborhood such as spending more money on patrols, building a new school, and hospital, budgeting for community parks, and improving the property.
Obstacle: Some action cards include new policies and changes that affect a few players but benefit others.
Resources: The game resources include money, action cards, property cards, tool cards, occupations, and community-building awards and Ask My Neighbor cards.
Victory Condition: All the resources and community-building awards that are counted by point at the end of the game. The winner has the highest point.
Player Interaction: Players persuade their neighbors to exchange the tools they need to complete their quests. All players must be able to compromise on certain decisions that affect the game. Players also have a chance to get to know other players through the Ask My Neighbors card deck.
Co-Creation: The game includes a set of blank Wish Fulfilled cards that allow players to contribute to the game content. For example, they can write new action cards, and suggest new properties, occupations, new policies, and tools.
Equity Design: The game reinforces the idea of equity-centered design that requires players to listen and recognize the needs of each neighbor and act upon the community's interest over personal benefit.
Content: The game’s content covers a variety of topics from real-world examples such as zoning, placemaking, public safety, public health, policymaking, budgeting, transportation, and infrastructure so that the players can walk away with a better understanding of their neighborhoods and apply these practices in their daily interactions with other neighborhood members.

Future Work

■ Revise the prototype and conduct more user tests.
■ The board game can be mass-produced through GoFundMe or contract. To encourage public interaction, the board game can be a life-size public installation where community members who may not know each other can play together. Similar to the life-size chess game, audiences will be the characters in the game. The game can be moderated using a remote control and a digital display screen.

Conclusion

Educational Values of Board Games
Classic Boardgames, such as Monopoly, the Game of Life & Candy Cane Land which we played when we were kids are excellent tools for teaching fundamental skills: learning how to communicate, problem-solve, collaborate, learn about a subject like math, art, science, business, etc. There’s a potential that board games can teach people about their personal and social matters such as how to vote, civic engagement, recycling, equity, social justice, recycling, climate change, mental health, diet, anatomy, relationships & career choices. Board games facilitate an engaging learning experience (learning by doing) for the users. It also cultivates a sense of ownership that allows the users to contribute to the content and outcome of the game. Thus, how can we repurpose and redesign everyday objects into educational tools?

What Does It Take for A Designer to Build a Community?
Building a “beloved community” is hard, tiring, and sometimes discouraging. It requires a lot of energy, time, and effort. Because each community has its own social fabrics and characteristics, it is vital that the designers step outside of the studio to make connections and build relationships with the community members. Although designers are known as creators, we can’t build a community. But with the right mindset and skillsets, we can inform, inspire, and influence people to build future communities and society they want to see.

What Does It Mean to Design with A Community in Mind?
When putting the community at the center of a design project, designers should reimagine what kind of community and society people want to build together, not only for themselves but also for the teachers, the single parents, the healthcare workers, the teenagers, the architects and the school principals who live in the same neighborhood.
Community-centered design can promise an equitable outcome as it not only brings together diverse voices of all members from different socioeconomic backgrounds, but also encourages people to contribute their personal assets and resources. In comparison to user-centered design, it tends to benefit a specific group of consumers who share a social status, come from a similar income household, or live in a certain part of a town, especially in segregated cities.
Lastly, when coming up with the design concept, from a community-centered perspective, the questions asked need to replace singular pronouns like he, she, and them with ‘community members.’ Below is the list of questions used in the process of generating the board game’s contents: