FANFAN APPLICATION
Fan Friends, Find Friends
Struggling in various psychological difficulties such as no sense of belongings, loneliness, feeling lost and homesick, Chinese international students are facing a severe social challenge. Our research led to a discovery that food is an efficient vehicle to meet their social needs. This exploration of food as a way to build social connections for Chinese international students led to the design of our social application. By using food and food-related activities to match and gather people, students gain more opportunities to expand their social networks both online and offline. As students using our platform to search, chat and participate in food-related activities lead to the expectation that they can build a meaningful friendship efficiently in the UK.
Design
Design Concept Video
Created by Floria Fu & Reina Yuan
DESIGN PROCESS
Research / Collaboration / Ideation / Prototyping / Testing
Project Overall
The topic of this project contains two keywords: Food and Psychological Insecurity. The research using food as a starting point to look deep into international students’ emotional insecurity and then propose a design using the subject of food as a vehicle to help students improve their sense of security in the UK. This project starts with research around the topic, then move into the design process to a design product in the end.
Theoretical Position Statement – Analysis of the Model Construction
This food-based model is originally derived from Maslow’s five-stage model of human needs, which reflects different human need levels in a context of psychological motivation.
Methodology
Multiple methods are utilized step by step in this project, and the workflow of the design process is shown below. The steps consist of a research stage (desk research, primary research), an empathic stage (a part of primary research with user), an ideation stage, a testing and prototyping stage, and a development stage.
Research Data Sample - Interviews, Diary research, Observation
A variety type of data has been collected through multiple research methods, such as interview transcripts, video, photos, text diary and etc. All data has been analyzed which lead to the key findings.
Word Could - Interview
Food Diary - Diary Research
Food party - Observation
Research Results
Food as an emotional support
The taste of home – A sense of belonging and comfort
Cooking – A sense of accomplishment and pleasure
Eating together
Most participants in the research indicated that they often felt lonely living in London and that they wanted to enjoy a meal with others
Food as a social bond
Chinese international students prefer to participant in food-related activities in order to satisfy their psychological needs. It is clear that food can bring students together and can help in establishing social connections
COLLABORATION
Ideation & Co-design
Prototyping
Based on research results I created a paper prototype to test the idea and a digital prototype to demonstrate the functions of our application. The prototype has been refined several times with many further testing with users.
Click the link to view the Interactive Prototype: https://projects.invisionapp.com/share/5XUQJEWG9Q4#/screens
TESTING
Idea & Prototype Testing
SPEED-EATING
Application Testing within Target Users