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Timeline: 20 weeks

Team: Luna Hollander, Xiao-Mei Huang, Thomas Nieuwendijk, Poornashri Kandade

Key Activities

Remote Ethnography
Learning Experience Design
Visual Storytelling
Prototyping
Social Business Model
Implementation Strategy

Design Challenge

Current Social Media platforms are less suitable to make money for aspiring Kenyan artists because these are designed for people who have enough resources to spend multiple hours a day online. The challenge lies in making existing online platforms more understandable for Kisumu artists to be able to make their own steady income as artists while creating a new narrative about their culture.

To make existing online platforms more understandable for Kisumu artists to be able to make their own steady income as artists while creating a new narrative about their culture.

Empowering upcoming artists of Kisumu, Kenya

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The evolution of Social Media Platforms

We found online platforms themselves are already in a competitive market. For example, Instagram (2010) has been one of the most relevant Social Media platforms in the world with 1.1 Million users. But, currently, TikTok (2016) is close to catching up with Instagram, with 0.7 Million users, shown on Statista (2020), in only four years. These are just a few of the biggest social media platforms with a reach of millions of users all over the world.

In a survey we conducted about “Where people learn about culture?” with a sample size of 47 people, it was concluded that people often are less willing to explore new online platforms to consume new content. An important insight was that developing a whole new platform would be time and money consuming while also being a big risk because you would have to find users for the platform. For this reason, it was decided to put the project’s focus on the online creator market rather than the online platform market.

Solution Proposed

An online educational program to complement the existing Education in Music and Art Programme (EMAP) that One Vibe offers, which could also stand on its own. This educational program is specially designed for artists in the slums who have ambitions to grow an online presence. The goals of this program are not only to teach social media strategies to people in the slums of Kenya but also to train these young creators to become quick adapters to the ever-changing market. Therefore, to recognise changes in demand, algorithms and find new ways to engage with their audience. The goal should be reached through teaching theory and learn-by-doing.

The decision to focus on the educational training was arrived at after a thorough analysis of the digital environment of the western and African contexts. The relationships between the two contexts are explained using an analogical approach to build a comprehensive yet easy to understand systemic view with the help of visuals in a metaphor.

Process

To envision a future context that does not exist, thorough research of factors was conducted - by observing trends, developments, states and principles. Clustering them further, over 100 collected factors were placed on two axes based on Schwartz human values. Each quadrant indicated a persona of the future - the 4 characters were named by their personality to understand the essence of that quadrant - the caretaker, the pragmatist, the activist and the hedonist.

The activist personality was chosen for this project and became the basis for further research.

The Activist

Fearless towards transformation but pragmatic and realistic consumers. Although their views on politics are bipartisan, they feel and take up social responsibility. They are born this way! Not defined by labels or gender. They are non-conforming.

Insights

Observing Shifts

A rather new way of life seems to have emerged with this generation and we are noticing major shifts. The world moving in a new direction.

Companies around the globe are preparing for this shift and implementing the necessary changes. For example, NS changed their announcements from “Ladies and Gentlemen…” to “Dear Travellers…”

What does this mean in the mobility scenarios? Motor companies are dominated by a masculine presence.

A hard look at Ford

Ford’s presence is masculine! That means as Gen Zers, we do not resonate with Ford.

On a deeper understanding, we observed some cues that indicated that motor companies, not just Ford, fail to recognise these conscious and unconscious gender biases creeping into all areas of the company.

Clearly, this needs to change. It means it’s time for ‘renovation’.

Journeys of the future

To understand the full impact of the lack of diversity it is essential to look into sources of bias. For years, journeys have been gender-based. Patterns are seen in male and female journeys.

The numbers are changing quickly and today we see no particular gender-specific journey pattern. Another cue is that the commute of today is equal and the commuters are diverse.

They prefer non-gendered commodities.