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