Chai N' Charcha
A Peer to Peer Collaborative Platform
Duration: 24 hours for concept presentation + 2 weeks for adding details and refining it
Project Info: This project was undertaken during 24 hours of designation by the ValueLabs. This is the more refined and extended version of the design proposal we submitted. To see our 24 hours documented journey visit our Tumblr blog. We were among the top 3 finalists who got the chance to present at the Design Inspire conference and was conferred with the Popular Choice Award.
My Role: UX Design, Storyboarding, Documentation
About Project
Problem:
The pandemic has changed the ways we function as a society. It has disrupted the whole world and forced us to reinvent our ways to adjust to new cultural shifts. The education sector also has tried to adapt and adjust to new functioning. But one of the major stakeholders of this sector, the students, especially those in higher studies were reported to be affected the most due to the pandemic. Along with the change in their learning modules, they also faced changes in the way they belong to their college community. Various studies also indicated the major change in students well-being as emotions like fear, stress, anxiety, loneliness have increased during the pandemic.
Proposed Solution:
Chai N’ Charcha - a peer to peer collaborative and interactive platform to help the student connect and collaborate with their peers in a fun and hassle-free way. The platform aims to give them a similar college environment as they have before the pandemic. Students from the same college come on one platform to support and help each other instead of staying alone and isolated. It motivates them to pick up their hobbies, group study together and meet new batchmates all at one place. The place where they truly belong in the trying times.
Design Process
We used the double diamond framework to guide our design process - which let us converge and diverge at different phases of designing.
Understanding Problem
It is widely known that humans are inherently social creatures. We thrive and grow in the communities to an extent that social connection can strengthen our immune system, lengthen our life, and lower rates of anxiety and depression. Pandemic brought in a universal culture shock with social distancing and resulting social isolation. This sudden shift in social interactions and the adoption of a new normal lifestyle has caused stress and anxiety among people.
Our secondary research to understand the effects of social isolation led us to discover that undergraduate and graduate students all over the world felt most burnout followed by working professionals. In context closer to home, a mental health study conducted over 8,000 individuals in Delhi confirmed that college students were the most affected by the pandemic. They registered a concerning increase in the following:
Students reportedly missed college, their peers and a string of activities on the campus. They felt difficulty in reconnecting with their parents which has caused them to feel severely frustrated and lonely.
Understanding the situation in-depth, we realised the necessity of peer to peer interactions and discussions in regular student life. The absence of which is resulting in stress, anxiety, frustration, loneliness and hopelessness. The luxury of simple things like “chai pe charcha” translating to “conversations over a cup of tea” is lost and we could now see the extent of the effect that space, people in the space and discussions held in a student’s life.
We tried to explore the problem at the intersection of distress face by students during these difficult times, helping them in transitioning to this new cultural shift of studying online and making them resilient to stay together. This led us to explore the peer to peer relationships to facilitate bonding and learning.
Empathising with Students
We tried to storyboard how students might be feeling or experiencing when they suddenly asked to shift from on-campus learning mode to online/ virtual learning. There are uncertainties about how to study alone, how to connect with their friends and peers, how to deal with pandemic stress and overall new normal situation? The ambiguity on how the future might hold for them and whom can they reach out to for help.
As per a study by the University in Kolkata 54% of students spent less time studying and attended only half the classes held. 15.5% of students were interested in digital learning through a conversation with their friends. 73.7% of the learners were not involved in any digital platforms for the study before the COVID-19 outbreak. It observed that students were more likely to learn through shared study materials than attending online lectures mainly due to poor internet connectivity.
To get a detailed picture of how the virtual learning space works, who all are connected, what technologies are used, what are the issues and frustrations: we mapped the whole system. This clarified on how people connect online and what tools are available to do so. It also showed the shortcomings in the current model of virtual interaction and what needs further modifications to make the experience more natural and organic.
We plotted what kind of changes students faced in peer to peer learning situation during this cultural shift. We mapped before and after Covid situation that helps us in identifying potential areas to examine.
Conversation among the peers
Generally, there are two types of conversation that take place among peers - Formal & Informal. Formal conversations happen based on school, homework, assignments, course-specific topics, etc. Informal conversations happen when they discuss their interests, personal lives. These kinds of conversations create strong relations.
Before the pandemic, these conversations happened in a physical space, on campus, in between classes and after college hours. Now, the classes are shifted to an online mode and there is no common space for the students to engage and interact. There are diminished interests and concentration levels among the students and turning up for a class is itself an achievement. A conversation after the class hours feels like a major work. Students also have to deal with other responsibilities at home while managing studies. All these changes lead to loneliness resulting in anxiety, chronic stress and subsequent depression.
Defining Design Statement
Based on our research, we came up with a design statement that would let peer relations prosper while improving community resilience that could help in increased individual resilience to fight loneliness.
To create an environment where college students feel more comfortable in connecting with peers and creating strong bonds.
While defining goals to put the design statement into practice, we realised that the environment that allows students to interact and communicate with each other would not be enough. This environment also needs to encourage them to pursue connections and help understand the benefits of these connections. It also means we need to see how we can modify regular peer learning and peer relations into new normal.
We defined the design goals to make our propose solution that benefit students and solve their main problems. It also helps us in converging to the main goal after extensive explorations.
Design Goals
We ideate using “How Might We” exercise to achieve the goals we defined. It helps us in narrowing down our ideas into a finite set of possible concepts, implemented to match these goals.
Proposed Solution
We then defined smaller goals that would help achieve the four larger goals accommodating both formal and informal spaces to give the feeling of collaboration and togetherness:
1) Need to make strong connections and new connections - confidence to communicate and develop social networks.
2) Encouraged students to share their knowledge.
3) Peer learning and study groups to tackle pressures.
4) Create a safe environment.
We started ideating about a digital platform which is interactive and easy to adapt. It leverages peer learning to create a sense of purpose for formal interactions that would let students indulge in more informal interactions.
Our focus was to design features and interactions that would let students collaborate easily on learning, comfortably make silly conversations - all while feeling together.
We proposed Chai N’ Charcha - an interactive and collaborative platform to help the student connect and collaborate with their peers in a fun and hassle-free way. We tried to incorporate all the goals which we defined to make the work of students easy in these difficult times. The platform aims to give them a similar college environment as they have before the pandemic. We have tried to bring students from the same college on one platform and encourage them to support and help each other instead of staying alone and isolated. It motivates students to pick up their hobbies, group study together and meet new batchmates all at one place.
Information Architecture
To create a safe environment:
Using College ID to sign up to verify the student and help in creating a safe environment while interacting with each other online. During the profile setup, they’ll need to add interests and learning areas about themselves which will help others identify them and also open up space for new connections.
To keep them updated about the various activities
The main feed of the platform is targeted to keep all the activities happening in check. Events that are going to happen, posts of your friends, and updates on Chai Meet. Chai Meet is a feature where one meets unknown peer remotely through common interests.
Chai Meet for informal conversations
In order to make students feel confident and determined in making strong connections, the platform helps in connecting to new peers with similar interests. This helps in overcoming the anxiety of making new connections by themselves. The app also supports sending an automated message, if one is not sure how to start a conversation.
To form like-minded Group Studies
Group studies help in collaborative learning and tackle the pressure of exams, deadlines, and assignments. Here, in this platform one can not only share resources to study but also get a feel of studying together, working together. The study showed students were willing to read shared resources more than attending online classes. When they are collaborating they see floating cursors of other collaborators. They can discuss using the voice feature at the bottom and also make notes using a highlighter.
Refer a Contact
Most of the time, we have a friend knowing someone else who can be of great help to us. Through this platform, one can reach out to their friends to refer their contact to others. They can then send them a request on your behalf and if they accept it, you need to maintain the connection by messaging them in the next 3 days.
Encourage & Engage
To keep them occupied in some form of activities to avoid loneliness, the platform provides space to host music jamming, game nights, writing classes, etc. They can stay updated on these notifications through the noticeboard. A place to see what activities will take place under what category, organized by whom, when, and where. They can also create their own board by giving it tags and setting up an expiry date for a poster in order to accommodate other posters.
Rewards
During their activities on the platform, badges are unlocked when they do nice things for their peers or help them connect. This can gamify the experience for them. Through this, they might feel the need to continue engaging with activities on the platform in their way.
Future Scope
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Have mental health experts or student board leaders facilitating emotional support
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Take the idea forward to the peer learning environment in workplaces.
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To explore other areas of online communications form through Digital Proxemics.
Reflection
The 24-hour designathon was a challenging experience for me. It was a design sprint where a brief was given and we need to define our problem statement in a short amount of time. I learned that narrowing down the problem area and user in the initial phase gives us enough time to ideate around the right solution at a later phase. It saves us from getting into unnecessary loops of what problem area is best and who should be our target users. Also, quick storyboarding to empathise with the user and visualize their journey helps us in designing towards the right direction.
As this was a virtual designathon, coordinating with the team and working remotely was a learning experience. You have to be very thorough with design deliverables and make sure everyone is on the same page. Also, the design sprint is a good way to generate fresh and unique ideas and quickly prototype and test the design solutions.
Team: Mrunali Ogriwala, Sakshi Meena, Sanjana Kothapalli
Special Mention: N. Chandrasekhar Ramanujan
Thankful to Jahnavi Koganti, Saili Gupte, Paulanthony George for their valuable time and feedback