GLU

1. Glu Bridging Cultures Abhishek Dewan Kruthi Sabnis Krishna

2. Problem The world is increasingly becoming culturally diverse, a sort of a global village, and given this adapting to new cultures is a hard process. Anxiety, language barriers are some of the major causes as to why people find it hard to adapt to new cultures.

3. Research

4. Data analysis

5. Finding 1: Misconceptions The biggest barrier for people to not interact with new cultures is stereotypes and misconceptions about the new cultures. I took so long to realize that Americans are so forgiving of our grammatical mistakes - U3 In the movies, Detroit looked like a huge city with big buildings, I landed and saw a huge farm - U1

6. Finding 2: Common ground People go out of their way to learn and mingle with new cultures when they do not find any common ground/ interest within their own cultural social group. I play video games but I couldnt find anyone in my group who played the same games as me and hence I tried reaching out to other people I knew who played the game - U8

7. Finding 3: References Language is a huge barrier while adapting to new cultures. People are comfortable talking to other people of the same culture because they feel understood I dont understand most of the American jargon/ pop culture references and I zone out of the conversation if I am in a group - U5 I did not know what What are you upto? meant! I was too shy to ask in a group and Googled it later - U2

8. System brainstorm Remove the misconceptions Help in learning new cultures Connect people based on common interests and goals Make them feel comfortable

9. The concept of Social Glue People who have some common ground with you. Two kinds of social glue People who are from Chinese/Indian culture (culture A) but have been residing in the United States (culture B) for a while. People who have common interests Be it music, food, sports.

10. System considerations How do we prevent trolling? How do we build trust? How do we build sustainability? Where is the life in the social ecosystem?

11. Design Brainstorm Pseudo anonymity to make people comfortable One on one conversation with your social glue to sustain interest Participate to clear misconceptions about your own culture Participate to learn new cultures Control the content by voting Build in trust within the system using Glue rating

12. Paper prototype Answer Answer interesting questions Down vote bad answers Ask Check My asks Favorite answers Slide right/left to remove bad answers Chat With randomized social glue

13. Whats next? Conduct prototype evaluation using the paper prototype with the defined user group. Include findings from the evaluations in the final report as next steps the group will take. Issue with bootstrapping Run a scan for appropriate questions on sites like qoura and reddit and gather them to create an initial database. Test with Beta users

14. Coming soon Thank You

GLU

Design

people comfortable

common ground people

learning new cultures

concept of social glue

kinds of social glue

chineseindian culture

cultural social group

randomized social glue