Skip to content

Ongoing Documentation

Hazeem bin Suffian edited this page Oct 21, 2022 · 36 revisions

Back to main page

Week 6

Initialised readings on previous report

As stated in our proposal "Cultural identity is the crux that allows a country to be independent but yet be enriched with individuals of different mentalities, lifestyles and preferences". Thus, the need for a cultural exchange stems from the biggest issues that international students and foreigners alike are facing during their lifetime such as language barriers, cultural differences and lack of opportunities to interact with the local environment.

Unfortunately, there are little to no solutions to help society break the formation of heterogeneous groups based on, for example, same cultural values, language spoken, political beliefs or religion.

Through readings on the previous report, however, we identified several design opportunities that could potentially reduce rapid increase in formation of heterogeneous groups. For example:

  • Diversification - an environment where people work together to achieve a common goal
  • Unification - introduce the formation of new groups through mixed working environments, socioeconomic status (high salary, new location), or mutual interests (sports)
  • Immigrational Programs - a mandatory participation course that helps foreigners to adjust to the new environment helps to form groups based on the same interest and goal

From an international student to an immigrant, it was evident from the previous readings that there are plenty of design opportunities that lie within the immigration and cultural integration domain.

Next step was to identify the main domain space or a niche specific topic which we would like to solve.

Chose report domain

Before choosing a specific aspect to focus on we narrowed down the problem space to university students only. This is because within a high school environment students collaborate and communicate on a daily basis in class where everyone studies in a mixed environment. In the universities, however, we discovered that relationships are mostly formed on homogeneous patterns (language, religion, culture).

This is because there are no mandated rules that imply visiting university on a daily basis () Thus an intervention or a design opportunity that promotes cultural diversification, unification and integration within the educational context had to be introduced.

Once we identified the main domain space and the problems associated with it, we brainstormed different design concepts in the ideation stage.

Developed key concepts through brainstorming

The design opportunities or key concepts that were developed through the brainstorming session address several issues:

  • Motivation - help students to step out of their comfort zone and engage with people from different backgrounds
  • Incentives - another concept which implies rewarding students for participation in a sponsored activity
  • Socialising - event or an activity where students collaborate and cooperate in a multicultural group environment
  • Gamification - allow students collect points that can be used as an intervention that tackles procrastination (playing a game vs discovering new)

Once enough data was collected, we planned out several user interview sessions as well as used other means to derive as much qualitative and quantitative data as possible.

Planned out user interview first rounds

From the demographic perspective we focused on international students aged 18 to 30 who are currently on a student visa. Furthermore, to fully comprehend the scope of the problem we were facing within our domain space, we were planning to conduct a first round of interviews and learn more about cultural assimilation.

The idea was to identify primary obstacles (is it language, culture, or both?) that forbid students to culturally integrate into the society.

Week 7

Finalising Domain Concept

As mentioned before, cultural integration is a topic that many individuals face upon arriving into a new country. This issue is more prominent for individuals who go over to a new country and must integrate immediately within the workforce because of the stark cultural differences they must learn. On the contrary however, due to the nature of the learning environment experienced within universities and schools, individuals are more likely to feel less judged for mistakes made. Thus, this increases the learning capabilities of one and ultimately, maximises the response time to culturally integrate within a society. Based off the above rationale, it would be reasonable to narrow down our problem space to only view learning environments, particularly universities. The reason why we have chosen this is because of the differences in choices of inter-relational friendships within a high school and tertiary environment. To elaborate, within a high school environment, individuals are forced to make and meet new friends within school as they are mandated to go to school five days a week. However, tertiary students are not mandated to go to university on a five-day basis but rather on a ‘as and when’ basis (E.g. if you have a tutorial to go to, you have the option to show up for that class or attend another session/ watch the recording of it).

The overarching problem is that international students have the tendency to group and make friends of the same ethnicity or that are of a homogenous group. This problem can be broken down into further sub-categories such as language barriers and cultural clashes which exist partially because of this issue. As seen later on within the research conducted, many international students have the tendency to stick towards a homogenous group where the diversity of language is less prominent than a multiculturally integrated social group. This causes a problem for students that may not be able to speak the host country’s language well since they are only forced to practice it during assessment submissions. Looking at the larger scope of things, this then has a causal effect when they go out into the working world. This is because being able to articulate and communicate in an effective and efficient manner is of utmost importance.

Segmentation of different cultures through the continuity of being within a homogenous group poses a major issue. Due to students staying within the same ethnic group, the ability for one to learn aspects of another culture is limited. When this occurs, cultural clashes could occur within different social groups. Similarly, when this issue is amplified, it can affect an individual on a spectrum of emotion, physical and mental factors. What one culture may seem as reasonably acceptable may be seen as an insult within another and this is the crux of the matter.

Academic Research

Based on the academic research, the design opportunities that could potentially reduce the number of formed heterogeneous groups lie within:

  • Diversification - forming groups based on a common cause, for example, achieving something together, working on a same goal can break the tendency to form groups based on race, language, gender, ethnicity.
  • Socioeconomic Unification - people are forced to leave heterogeneous groups because new groups will be formed based on income which might affect their geographical location (ex. buying a house in a new neighbourhood and meeting new neighbours), what school or university they study in (level of education) as well as hobbies, interests, or professional skills which help to establish new work relationships with other people.
  • Educational Intervention - an obligatory language course aimed at heterogeneous groups which consists of topics that can help people to quickly integrate into a new society. This method helps individuals to form new groups based on interests and common goals, for example, finding a new job, rather than staying in the heterogeneous circle because of personal prejudice, race, or religious beliefs.

Interview Insights

From conducting primary research through interviewing international students, the following key insights have been identified; event driven integration, language training and mutual commonalities. Events are an effective methodology to encourage cultural integration. Most international students have mentioned that their maximum interaction with the local community has been facilitated through university class groups, student society-run social events and union-run activities. This suggests the inherent need for an initial push to help encourage individuals to step outside and make friendships out of their comfort zones. The reliance on externally platformed events suggests reluctance for approaching new individuals/groups alone. This helps form an understanding that social cohesion has to be developed and crafted as individuals seek to leverage existing opportunities to culturally assimilate within society, even if there is strong self-motivation to culturally integrate within society individuals will be shy to make the first step or will not know how to properly integrate and therefore need to be given opportunities through events to do so. From analysing the interviews an understanding can be developed on the nature of language barriers. This is that international students primarily understand English and are able to recall the appropriate vocabulary and syntax, but their ability to speak English is mostly perceived to be weak due to their accent; which is the tone and pronunciation of words, this helps gain an understanding that cultural integration and overcoming language barriers for most international students is not about learning a completely new language but instead it is about understanding the way of speaking that particular language (pronunciation, tone). Furthermore, the interviews help gain an insight that most international students socialise within their groups that consist of students from similar origins and they primarily communicate in their native language to each other. This suggests that the opportunities to practice English are generally limited to students outside of their comfort zone. Using the interview insights collected it can be determined that the perceived language barrier can be overcome through opportunities to re-train individuals in pronouncing words in Australian mannerisms and by increasing their opportunities to practice speaking the language.

Culture and situation plays a large role for integration within foreign society. The interviews collected displayed that a majority of international students have social groups that primarily consist of students from similar origins. This can be rationalised as individuals of similar origins share similar values and culture, this helps them connect as it is a point of commonality. Furthermore, individuals who are in situations where they need to culturally integrate find comfort in others who share similar experiences. This helps create an understanding of human psychology, as comfort is found in areas where there are common values, culture and interests; these similarities are what can bring individuals together. In the space of cultural integration focusing on how to find similarities between individuals with different backgrounds would be a point to consider as people require mutual similarities to connect. Forming potential solutions which aid the creation of a broader comfort zone will allow international students to integrate more effectively within Australian society.

Target Audience

We focus on designing for UQ international students aged 18 to 30 who are currently on a student visa. These students can be pursuing their bachelors, masters and phD level coursework and are enrolled internally so that they can be physically present at UQ sponsored events. The students within the target audience all come from different cultures and possibly countries and do not speak English as a native language.

Skills

The students have a relatively high level of education as they all finished high school in order to enrol at UQ; furthermore, these students possess English language skills up to IELTS pass rate standard - an English language test that students have to take prior to admission and enrolment in UQ.

Values

The target audience values friendship and communication with people in social settings. These student's friend groups mostly consist of friends who come from the same culture as them; however, the target audience students at the very least possess a low level of determination to branch out of their culture and to integrate into the broader community. This aspect is particularly important as students with no determination to socialise at UQ events would be much harder to appeal to through our social mobile application.

Workflows

Viewing our audiences’ workflows, we note from the research conducted that international students tend to combat cultural integration through finding comfort with a homogenous social group. Through this, they are able to connect and relate more easily to one another as they were able to speak a common language. Though this workflow may be helpful and even necessary for cultural integration, we have found that individuals would stay within this comfort zone and never expand their network, leading to the problem at hand. Furthermore, through this workflow, students felt it awkward to speak English within a Chinese social group and hence, did not practice it, furthering the cultural integration issue explored.

Experiences

The experiences that our targeted users have would include having a tendency to stay within a homogeneous social group. This factor could be led by a introverted aspect as they may not wish to move outside of their comfort zone to seek a broader culture experience. Furthermore, the targeted audience could have experience with low self-esteem/determination, which also contributes towards the tendency for them to stay within their comfort zone. Finally, a major aspect that may contribute towards their experiences could be the lack of information being presented to them.

Priorities

Based off the initial research conducted, the priorities of our targeted audience could consist of a tendency to stay in rather than to go out due to their introverted nature. Following this, comfort would also be a priority for them compared to actively seeking out new social groups to culturally integrate into. This can be contributed to an embarrassment factor when trying to culturally integrate due to the thought of judgement from other individuals.

By the end of this week we had written and completed our concept proposal.

Week 8

This week was the start of a major overhaul in terms of the way our group tackled the issue of cultural integration within the university environment. As we posed our ideas to the tutors, we were fired back with questions on testing the legitimacy of the methodology and solution we had originally proposed. Originally, we thought that incentives through the idea of monetisation was the right way to capture an individual to come to an activity and complete it happily but as the tutors questioned and as we found out through further research, this was not the case.

Our pivot for the project revolved around asking the question on what it truly meant for an individual to be culturally integrated. This was broken down into two major points:

  • Cultural integration doesn’t mean incentivising someone monetarily or rewarding them with prizes but rather, about facilitating an organic relationship between each other so that internationals and locals feel integrated within a particular group
  • In order for cultural integration to occur, there needs to be a mixture of both international and local students so that an organic relationship can occur between each other

Due to the redirection of our solution, more interviews were conducted to consider local perspective as well as attaining an understanding on how different social clubs were able to engage with their international students. Raw data from the interviews were then analysed and placed into a miro board for major common insights to be grouped up and discussed about.

Structure of interviews:

  • 3 rounds of interviews were completed
    • Round 2 interviews were based off asking further questions to individuals with supplementary questions on their experience with culturally integrating through social clubs and events
    • Round 3A interviews were structured to attain the perspective of cultural integration from international students
    • Round 3B interviews were structured to attain further insights on how locals viewed cultural integration together with internationals

Link to MIRO board: https://miro.com/app/board/uXjVPXQH1DI=/?share_link_id=897301423509

image

image

image

From the above interview rounds, the main insights gathered are as follows:

  • Bringing people together through commonalities and thus fostering long term friendship rather than a short term friendship.
  • Similarly, the idea of putting like minded people that have the same common goal in mind also works towards this.
  • Creative event driven system that is looking to facilitate interactions between individuals or even groups.
  • Mandatory events or actions, though often negatively perceived, can be used as an initial catalyst for cultural integration which would lead to such events or actions being perceived positively in the long run

In combination with interviews conducted, academic research was also completed to check existing solutions that had been implemented. These formed the bases of identification of what issues we should look out and the findings are as follows:

  • Personalisation and long-term commitment - a custom tailored plan that unifies events, cultural and social activities in a form of a journey that lasts throughout the semester.
  • Unification of the search results - events, social and cultural activities aggregator platform that acts as a central hub for UQ students to help them quickly learn about events, social and cultural activities.
  • Improving cooperation and collaboration - a Digital Ambassador AI system that motivates students to actively participate and engage in social and cultural activities by grading the level of performance, as well as assisting and guiding students towards stronger cooperation and collaboration.
  • Increased performance through mandatory participation - encourage students to attend cultural or social activities by introducing a partially mandatory enrollment system.

Week 9

Throughout Week 9 our team progressed by highlighting important insights in the data and from these insights gaining key system requirements as well as our overall concept design for what the solution/prototype would be.

In the most basic form, the main concept of the application would involve having a sign-up process that made the user state things about them such as their interests, hobbies, degree, and University study year. From these things, mainly being their interests, they are placed into groups where they can chat and eventually meet and possibly create a lasting friendship. For international students, this would be an opportunity to talk and meet with local students who fall under the same interest as them and thus facilitating cultural integration.

The system requirements we found are in the research report. The following is the low fidelity prototype sketch that was made from these requirements:

Low Fidelity Prototype.pdf

The purpose of this prototype was to visualise the initial concept we created as well as to quickly test the concept with target users to find if they would use and find value in such an application. As well as this, the purpose of the test the purpose of the tests was to find if the overall concept made sense to users in terms of how quickly they got a hold of the different menus and features. The users tested were found based on the personas we created as shown below:

Screen Shot 2022-10-15 at 9 37 39 pm Screen Shot 2022-10-15 at 9 37 13 pm Screen Shot 2022-10-15 at 9 37 26 pm

From this test we found that users could easily understand the purpose of the application and found value in such a solution. While some of the menus needed refining, the importance of validating the value our solution would bring to target users by visually showing it to them was the most important aspect of this testing. From this, we created the medium fidelity prototype:

image Screenshot of the medium fidelity Figma prototype

In addition, Observations helped to identify key demographics which we used to further improve the research. For the next iteration of the design process, we conducted observations of our target demographic. Finding situations where we could best identify key interaction patterns and personal characteristics. The situations which we observed were:

  • Educational environment (studio)
  • University food court
  • College Dining hall
  • Professional networking event

In addition, we used storyboarding technique and mapped our key personas that would use the app. We created a set of scenarios to better understand the design direction. That is construction of user interface to match the needs of our personas.

image

Screenshot of the storyboard for one of our user groups

Week 10

The week was designated to conducting user testing for the medium fidelity Figma prototype that was generated over the weekend of Week 9. First, we created a list of tasks that need to be completed by users, covering all functionalities of the prototype.

User Tasks

  1. Sign up with your UQ email
  2. Respond to the survey questions
  3. Check all chats that are available on the platform
  4. Go back to your personalized chats
  5. Go to Game Of Thrones chat
  6. Add a new Member to your chat
  7. Remove a member of your chat called Donald Quartzenegger

For each user test, the team agreed to employ the following Human-Computer Interaction testing methods: Time on Task, Think Aloud and Post-Test Feedback Survey.

Time on Task: Record the time it takes for the user to complete each user task.

Think Aloud: Ask the user to verbalise his thoughts during user task completion.

Post-Test: Feedback Survey

  1. What did you think of this application in terms of functionality and usability?
  2. Do you think this application would be helpful for you to get to know another individual? Why/why not?
  3. What could you think of to add towards this application to improve the sense of ‘community’ and facilitate the ability for someone within the chat to meet up with each other?
  4. How efficient were conversation starters?
  5. What did you think about the event starters? Do you think it helped you interact with new individuals?
  6. How likely are you to stay in contact with the individuals within the chats throughout a 3/6/12 month’s time?
  7. How likely are you to hang out with these individuals in person?
  8. Was there anything about this application you thought wasn’t necessary/ was needed?

The Script The script was developed that would be read to each user to provide the user with information about concept behind the prototype and to set expectations for the user testing session.

“We are developing an instant messaging application for international and local students that will facilitate cultural integration by encouraging communication between users to assist them in making new friends and developing positive, long-lasting relationships with each other. Within the application, you will be able to provide details about your interests and hobbies during the sign-up process which will be made compulsory for all incoming students at your university. Based on your interests, you will be placed into chat groups with students who share your interests. As part of the survey, you will respond to questions related to your leadership ability and level of extrovertness and the person with the highest scores on these questions will be made the administrator of your group chats. Within each chat that you are assigned to, you will be able to communicate with peers via text messages, images, videos and gifs. Automated bot messages with relevant local event notifications and memes will be periodically sent into your group chats to stimulate activity in the group chats. You will also be able to browse all chats that you have not been assigned to, with an ability to join any additional group chat that might interest you.”

image image image image

Storyboards & Wireframes The following methods we have chosen to conceptualize our design are Storyboards and Wireframes [Appendix]

Firstly, Storyboards are crucial in the design process as Babich (2017) stated that storyboarding in a UX design process is a great instrument for ideating a design. It was further implied that storyboards plan out the journey of users (personas) which help designers to tie in research findings, user stories and personas to develop requirements that are needed in the product (Babich, 2017).

Secondly, Wireframes are also crucial in the prototype design process. Experience UX (n.d.) defined wireframes to be laying out content and how the page flows/works. It is also stated that wireframes are used in early development of a prototype to establish the structure of the prototype before the User Interface and content is added (Experience UX, n.d.). An advantage of using wireframes is that it provides early feedback after user testing with users on how the page flows and it ensures the page contents and functionality are structured well before designers can go ahead with designing a User Interface for the prototype (Experience UX, n.d.).

Findings

If Mungus application is going to push event notifications to encourage students to meet up with each other, don’t limit the events to specific group chats only. Rather, give the users an ability to browse all events in a form of a community page that is not tied down to their interests. Thus, having events both in a communal page and in group chats provides users with additional flexibility in which events they would like to attend. On the community wall, the users, for example, can see all ongoing events and join a general discussion with all university students participating. The links to sign up to the event can also be provided on the community wall.

Since Mungus users must sign up and log in with their UQ email (as the sign up process is mandatory for incoming university students), inform the users that they must sign up with their UQ email to make the sign up process rather than any email that they may otherwise use.

The survey for interests is not user friendly as the questions asked are too broad, generic and do not provide the user with enough understanding why Mungus application is collecting this data. Thus, the interests survey page must provide a clear reasoning for the goal of the survey, which can be the title of the page. Furthermore, the user does not know how to respond to the broad question “What are your interests”; rather, provide the users with an ability to provide bullet point answers to the question. Lastly, it is best to tie down the survey to UQ on-campus activities to make the questionnaire more tangible to the university activities. Thus, ask questions with regard to university specific activities such as “Networking events” or “Sporting events”.

The second page of the survey, “Leadership and Extrovertness” is not intuitive in its design. The page should have a title that is clearly tied to the questions in the survey – “Personal Characteristics” would be a great name, for example.

Add a search bar to be able to search for any chat that the users are not currently a part of to facilitate the searching process.

Make the buttons larger and more colourful to let the users know where they should click to proceed to different pages. Time on Task results support this motion, since the screens with grey buttons took long to complete.

Make the group chat icons interactive to add more interactivity which will provide a more modern website feel. As such, a “Hover” effect can be added when the users are hovering over a group chat when they are selecting between group chats that they are a part of. Hovering over a group chat will enlarge the chat icon.

The limitation of the current Figma prototype is that it is impossible to simulate a real conversation with users. Thus, having an interactive chat in the group is essential to test the effectiveness of the prototype to stimulate communication based on common interests

Stand-up

During the standup, the team explained the pivot made from the event-driven application proposed in Week 8 to a common interest interactive messaging application. The Figma prototype was shown to the tutors and the objectives of the application were explained.

Tutor Feedback and Reflection 1. Create a simulation of the group chats based on common interests Mungus team needs to test whether the proposed application actually can spark a conversation between a group of students who do not know each other, based on a common interest or hobby. To do this, the team will create a simulation of the application’s functionality using an existing, external instant messaging application. The functionalities identified as concept requirements for the application should be tested such as communicating via text, images or gifs as well as automatically pushed event notifications and pushed memes that are supposed to encourage active communication for the members of the chat.

2. Ensure to have a working group chat for the real prototype The coded prototype must have a working group chat built-in as a core functionality, since the ability for users to communicate with each other is essential to testing the idea that common interests can provide users with enough motivation to communicate in the created group chats and thus contribute to cultural integration of international students and the development of friendships between international students and local students.

Simulation

To simulate the effectiveness of the group chats, Mungus team decided to use a Discord channel for a simulation. Five volunteer users, of whom three were international students and two were domestic students were placed into a group chat based on a common interest – Counter Striker Global Offensive game. The users did not know each other prior to the simulation.

The team simulated “automated bot messages” by sending information into the chat via a text message. This was done once at the beginning of the simulation, with the following text:

“Hi everyone! We are very excited to introduce you to UQ’s chat functionality system! You have all been placed into this chat based on a similar group commonality – CSGO. This chat serves the purposes of allows you to get comfortable and meet up with one another prior to the orientation week!”

The event notifications were pushed into the group chat on the fourth day of the simulation to encourage communication. The events were related to the broader topic of “Videogames in Brisbane” and the following message was pushed as the simulated “automated bot message”:

“Hey everyone! Here are some events you may like to try out together!

  1. Supanova 2022- Brisbane
  2. General Games & Speed Run Showcase”

Over the course of six days, the team monitored chat activity and pushed events into the group chat on the fourth day of the simulation to encourage communication.

Findings

All five users participated in chat communication during the simulation. The users primarily used text messages and emojis in their communication. One also posted a picture relevant to the CS:GO topic.

The users were relatively consistent in keeping an active conversation, except for two days between Day 2 and Day 4 of the simulation where there was no communication. This resulted in Mungus team pushing the event notification into the group chat in an effort to encourage further communication. The event push resulted in strong user reengagement as users discussed the events in detail on the day of the push.

Overall, the group chat based on common interests, with automated bot guidance that pushed notifications into the group chat, resulted in an active conversation between the chat users. The users communicated via text and images and the conversation was relevant to the topic. While event notification sparked a conversation about users planning to go to one of the events, the users did not end up meeting up for the event. Despite that, the simulation has proven that group chats based on common interests will spark a conversation among students who do not know each other, which suggests that the proposed Mungus team has a realistic foundation behind their concept.

Week 11

Code and Development

HTML & CSS

The web application was created with HTML code with different types of tags such as forms, input, table, and etc. The applications consist of eight different HTML files. The styling of the applications were done with CSS and it consists of five different CSS files for the different HTML pages in our web application.

JavaScript

The code language that was used to produce our working web application was JavaScript. Our web app consists of two JavaScript files that are crucial to having a working groupchat in our web app. The groupchat functionality was inspired by ScaleDrone where we had to have a unique channel ID created by ScaleDrone. From this, the groupchat code was made with pure JavaScript. The names that appear in the groupchat is created by the user's input from the welcome/sign up page. When the user inputs their name, a JavaScript file consists of code that stores the user's input. When the user enters the groupchat, another JavaScript file will consist of code where their name that the user had previously inputted will be called and shown in the groupchat.

User Testing Session Summary

Below is the summary derived from the user testing session where we asked participants to engage with the final version of our prototype.

Usability - The ease of use of the app:

Good:

  • Several chat rooms give plenty of options to choose from
  • Ability to express yourself using different interactions (emoji, images, GIF)
  • Search chat feature helps to quickly find necessary interest

Require Improvement:

  • Introduce consistent UI across all pages
  • Examples or expectations from the chat. Clearly illustrate what users can discover in the chat rooms
  • Discuss and explain what means to become an administrator
  • Hard to identify the chat user visited or joined
  • Missing functionality such as invite user, add user or complain on user to help prevent spam
  • Password field must be duplicated to mitigate risks with mistyped words (wanted to type: 12345 / actually types: 123456)
  • Forgot password functionality to restore password via a phone, email or QR code

Idea - The main purpose of using the app:

Good:

  • Community wall discussion functionality is helpful to get to know another participant prior to joining the event. Usually, people don’t know the list of attendees. This feature helps to quickly find like minded people and form new relationships based on the interest.
  • Chat room functionality based on the questionnaire is highly appreciated, because people can view several options and establish new connections (find friends) in multiple areas of interest, at the same time

Require Improvement:

  • Organic friendship formation - because all people are different, it is hard to solve specific needs of the user. When people join the "Game of Thrones", although they are united by a common interest, in chat however, they break apart because of the specific value they were after - characters, scenes, "Red Wedding", House Targaryen, etc. Here, the very meaning of the interest implies creating additional sub chats specific to the interest. For example, sub chat for “House Targaryen”. This issue appears only after participants joined the chat and discovered that it solely consists of fans who don't actually know a lot about characters nor who played what role in the series.

  • Ambassador role - administrator needs to be highly extroverted and immediately understand his task and purpose. As of right now, the concept of an ambassador is not clear in terms of what value it brings to a highly active and social person. In addition, being administrator implies visiting chat rooms daily (maintain order, kick users out, participate in discussion). Such activities can consume a lot of free time which our user group doesn't have.

Future Directions

  1. Tutorial guideline for first time users is needed to step users through the web application, allowing them to fully explore the functionalities within the web and breaking down of any misconceptions of the application. This enables individuals to get past the initial ‘user interaction barrier’ they may face.
  2. Implementation of an add/remove as well as report functionality would allow for the continuation of the cultural integration process. This is because it would enable users the freedom to join/ leave chats if they think that it will improve their journey to culturally integrate and form meaningful relationships
  3. Creation of mini breakout chat rooms would satisfy the system requirement of common interests, allowing users to easily connect to others who have the same niche interest.

Promotional Material and Poster

Throughout Week 11 we worked on creating promotional material that would successfully show off and even explain the prototype even when we are not there to explain it. To do this in a way that lived on we created a Mungus instagram page and posted various images and undertook a 'marketing campaign' that would show off our concept/idea in sizeable chunks suitable to grab the average viewers attention. To take this further, we also gained a few followers to 'grow' the page. https://instagram.com/culturally_mungus?igshid=NzNkNDdiOGI=

Screen Shot 2022-10-20 at 11 17 21 am

After this we created a poster that would further explain our concept, as well as the initial problem space and an overview of our iterative process throughout the semester. The poster follows the same styling as the instagram page to ensure consistency and make them somewhat of a pair. For this we used a combination of Canva and Photoshop. Screen Shot 2022-10-20 at 11 17 21 am