ChallengeWhen people move to the Bay Area, if they don't integrate into their cultural communities (i.e. Chinatown, Japantown, Little Italy...) or don't have friends or family members in the city, they end up feeling lonely and depressed. This usually leads to their disconnect from the society and a constant search for a place of belonging.
ConceptMeraki is a social entrepreneurship grounded in fostering deeper meaningful connections between people by initiating conversations through play.
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My RoleDesign Strategy, Social Media Strategy, Research Collaborator, Visual Design, Photography and Video-Editing.
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Early in August 2017, my teammates and I moved to San Francisco from different countries: Sakshi moved from London, Anshu from India, and myself from Lebanon.
When we first arrived to San Francisco, we didn't know anyone in the city but later we got to know each other through CCA. We realized that we have a common passion for understanding people and wanting to include them in society, which led us to creating Meraki. I was personally struck by the fact that even though San Francisco is such a richly diverse city, different cultural communities still stuck together, building districts and geographically limiting them. Even though this was creating more inclusion for certain people, it unfortunately aggravated the bigger social divide, where a lot of residents didn't feel that they belong in any community anymore. In this project I was interested in exploring the ideas of belonging, social identity, and cross-cultural human connection. |
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Charades: Connection in Motion |
Jenga: Tower of Tales |
Monopoly: Strategic Connections |
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In order to better understand the challenge and the bigger system, we sat in public areas observing people and passersby, noting down their interactions and power-dynamics. In addition to that, we reached out to designers and journalists who were already working in this field, and sent out photographic cultural probes to our acquaintances.
In order to better understand the user's perspective, we set up survey boxes in CCA for 3 weeks, where questions were weekly changed. We also conducted 25 interviews. |
In addition to that, we hosted a small multi-cultural dinner themed around "Belonging", inspired by The Feast by Jerri Chou. Also, we got presented a great opportunity by Scott Shigeoka to host a dinner for the team and crew of Second Chance, as part of the Re-imagine: End of Life festival in San Francisco. We got to observe people meeting each other for the first time, and get in deep conversations around belonging, identity, culture, and end of life, which gave us a much broader perspective on the topic.
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Based on the research findings, we founded Meraki.
Meraki is a social entrepreneurship grounded in fostering deeper meaningful connections between people by initiating conversations through play. |
Our main concept is hacking existing games by leveraging the shared, common mental model of popular games. The goal is to reduce anxiety of learning a new game and make the first conversation of meeting a new person easier.
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We believe that language should never be a barrier in getting to know someone. In this version, instead of regular words, players act out answers to quirky, personal questions helping them learn more about each other. Our most interesting finding was that being silly in the game context helped our players get comfortable and get over any awkwardness.
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After user-testing, players wanted a tangible takeaway from the game. So in the final version, we added a fun twist at the end where players have to create their own handshake before they end the round. This becomes their own secret language and souvenir from their shared moment.
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Physically making something is always a fun way to connect with someone. In this version the Jenga pieces became our building blocks and helped in creating castles of conversation. We designed categories and question prompts which would let players dive deeper and help the conversation flow smoother.
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After user-testing, we learned that every time the Jenga tower falls, it awkwardly stops the conversation. So in the final version, instead of removing blocks, players would be adding the Jenga blocks as they answered questions. The growing tower became a metaphor of the growing conversation and the developing relationship between the players.
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In this game, we really wanted to give players an opportunity to open up and talk about their emotions and beliefs. So we designed this version of strategy where monetary value is traded for personal stories. Instead of buying property around the board, players buy categories representing the phases of life.
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After user-testing, we realized that players want more flexibility to ask questions. So in the final version we empowered players to ask any related topic questions as and when other players land in their section. Since we gave the power of asking questions to the players this gave them a chance to open up and talk about deep personal topics.
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We launched our Meraki website where you can learn more about the project, and download the games for free. Meraki aims to have all the games available for people to try out with their social circles, classmates, coworkers, roommates...
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