In fall of 2022, Team Big Apple presented to the city council of Davis our idea of a human-centered design approach to create a vibrant, multigenerational experience at G street, a popular street in Davis.
Using inspiration from a previous design group, our team decided to focus on the topic of cultural diversity in Davis.
Their idea involved a food truck festival and multilingual flyers. The goal of their project was to increase visibility of various cultures and create an inclusive atmosphere.
We interviewed 10 people, from various age groups and cultural backgrounds about their experiences on G St.
This was very important because we wanted to get stories and insights directly from our target audience, as this would allow us to fully empathize with them and to learn about their feelings and motivations behind their choices.
Through our frameworks, we noticed Dilpreet.
Dilpreet is a UC Davis Alumni who often visits G-street with his friends.
We were most inspired by Dilpreet because he had a burning passion for the community as well as the diversity that’s offered within it.
We started exploring a variety of ideas, from design installations and pop-up restaurants, to creating a community mural or hosting public events .
Here are some samples of our concept sketches revolving around the idea of public events and installations.
So… we pivoted!
With helpful feedback and thinking more through the games concept, we realized that this idea was highly dependent on us to maintain/run the area.
We wanted to refocus our scope but still hold true to our mission to inspire cultural connection in Davis.
For the passport, here’s how we went from an initial concept sketch to a tangible rapid prototype
Testing our prototype led us to many interesting and rewarding findings! From our prototype testing, we found that many people walking by were captivated by our chalk drawings and all of our participants had never engaged with bollywood dance suggesting that this was a unique way of engaging the community. Though people showed genuine interest in learning about other cultures, many people were unwilling to stop what they were doing to go dance.
Taking all our feedback and learnings into account, our new idea is to set up self-sustaining stations with bi-weekly prompts and cups of chalk.
To give a better picture of what this might look like, a sample prompt in December would be: What does celebrating the new year look like in your culture?
The great news is that this type of movement is already gaining momentum in our community!
Just a couple weeks ago on campus, the Design Department hosted an event for people to draw what diversity, equity, and inclusion meant to them.
The beautiful chalk walk, pictured here, inspired others to look and contribute as well.
We definitely want to test out our new prototype, and really circle back to self-sustaining.
And going even further, how might we incorporate other low-threshold activities?
While in the grand scheme of things we may still be in the beginning stages of ideation and prototyping, our main objective continues to be building a community within G street that encourages people to share and learn about other cultures.
The research we’ve conducted indicates that people do care about cultural inclusivity. Moving forward our goal is to continue working through the design process and exploring different attractions to effectively create a diverse and inclusive atmosphere.
We were inspired by their passion for culture in Davis, and wanted to see how we could further develop their idea. This led us to interviewing a wide range of people from different cultures.
We used a variety of frameworks, pictured here, in order to break down what we heard from our interviewees.
In this way, we were able to categorize our findings and uncover a series of trends.
Based on Dilpreet’s interview, we developed our point of view which would guide us for the rest of the project.
We believe it’s essential to focus on building a community where people feel a sense of belonging, while at the same time, still having unique opportunities to be heard and represented.
Our initial idea was a game area that encouraged people of all ages and backgrounds to participate in childhood games from other cultures.
However, as we began to hash out the details, our team realized that though our initial prototype provided a solution to the problem, it may not be the best one.
Introducing Dancing Around The World! This idea involves engaging the community through dance and music. Using G-street as our dance floor, we wanted to introduce people to new cultures through step-by-step tutorials of easy to follow dance routines.
We spent an hour teaching people how to do Bollywood dance, listening to Indian music, drawing Rangoli chalk art on the street, and talking and laughing together. At the end, we gave our participants passports that we created, which acted as a record where they could earn stamps and track their dance progress.
During this process, we witnessed the power of community engagement and were motivated by people's interest in learning about other cultures.
And here’s our final iteration!
We added a fun color scheme and illustrations to make the passport more welcoming, as well as thought-provoking discussion questions.
We digitally illustrated the passports and printed them out into little booklets.
On the right is a photo from our prototyping day, of a participant with his passport and a stamp collected.
We asked questions to figure out how to evolve our prototype further.
How might we use chalk drawings to effectively share and engage with cultures, continuously and quickly?
We’d also create an Instagram page to keep track of our community’s progress and engagement.
People get chances to have their work and themselves featured.
Community engagement through chalk is also popular outside of Davis. This past summer, I went to the 7th annual ChalkFest in Arbor Lakes, Minnesota. This event welcomes people of all skill levels from students to professional chalk artists to share their craft and is deeply cherished by the Minnesota community.
Our main takeaway from this project is that people are interested in sharing their own cultures and learning about others but need a more accessible and comfortable way to do so.
This would be especially impactful for Davis, because it’s primarily a college town with so many people from all over the world, and it’s important that we take care of them and help everyone feel connected with a sense of belonging!
Thank you all for coming, taking the time to listen to our presentation.