REMOTE RESEARCH / BOT DESIGN
Building a neutral entity to mediate conversations between strangers
In an age of constant conflict, a more empathetic society is better equipped to deal with increasingly complex problems faced by the Human Civilization.
CONTEXT
In very recent times, there has been a rise in Social Conflict. This conflict has invaded our lives on all levels, from local to global. Can we develop a solution to enhance communication and empathy between states and their citizens?
For example, Relations between India and Pakistan have been complex due to a number of historical and political events. Relations between the two states have been defined by the violent partition of British India in 1947, the Kashmir conflict and the numerous military conflicts fought between the two nations.
Consequently, even though the two South Asian nations share linguistic, cultural, geographic, and economic links, their relationship has been plagued by hostility and suspicion.
How might we create Empathy between people separated by Geographical and Socio-Political Barriers?
INSIGHTS
Can we measure Prejudice?
I got in touch with a bunch of enthusiastic volunteers for this project from India and Pakistan using Twitter. Interestingly, the results for both the psychometric tests that I conducted were almost identical across the board, with only minor deviations. The target group were people from the age of 18 to 23, male and female.
Visualization above represents SDO 7 scores between volunteers in India and Pakistan.
Social Dominance Orientation is a social psychological scale that is a measure of an individual's preference for hierarchy within any social system and the domination over lower-status groups.
Collective Self Esteem is a scale to assess individuals’ social identity based on their membership in ascribed groups such as race, ethnicity, gender, and the like.
By measuring for Social Dominance Orientation and Collective Self Esteem, one could form an overview that SDO is inversely related to empathy. Empathy indirectly affects generalized prejudice through its negative relationship with SDO.
It also has a direct effect on generalized prejudice, as lack of empathy makes one unable to put oneself in the other person's shoes, which predicts prejudice and antidemocratic views.
How do we Resolve Conflict?
Curiosity is the willingness to own one's judgement and be curious to explore someone else's perspective.
Vulnerability is the willingness to expose oneself to danger. During conflict resolution, when a person gets vulnerable, they stop managing the emotional and moral burden of others and focus on themselves.
In a conflict, both sides are right. The objective is to acknowledge each one's sacred values and build common ground. This process is deeply introspective and reflective outwardly.
IMMERSION
To see if I can gain insights and explore cultural contexts, I conducted a Photo Study with a few users to generate contextual data. Below is an album of Collages by an enthusiastic volunteer.
The 'missions' for the Photo Study were:
Choose and Photograph personal objects around you that mean something to you.
Document interesting skills that you or people are you possess that you appreciate.
Document activities that are usual or habitual to you or people around you.
Document how you and people around you enjoy yourselves and celebrate.
STRATEGIES THAT LEAD TO EMPATHY
Using Artefact Group's practical toolkit, Designing for Empathy, I adopted the following Strategies to brainstorm solutions and concepts. All prompts sourced from the toolkit.
PRELIMINARY DESIGN DIRECTIONS
To utilise food culture, sharing recipes and making meals from both the sides of the conflict. Concept variations include sharing tastes in Movies, Music and Art as well.
To build an interactive and gamified experience which opens up users to new perspectives. Builds a narrative where opposing factions must come together to complete the game.
To develop an interactive Pen Pals initiative, connecting people to new people, guided along a mature discussion using preset prompts to develop the conversation and narrative.
To setup an automated call service, connecting two people in the waiting list.
See Mojave Phone Booth.
DESIGN RESPONSE
Bottle Bot is a Bot that lives in the Facebook Messenger Platform giving access to over 900 million active monthly users.
For 3 months, each user replies to a question prompt daily which is forwarded to the other three Participants that the user has been paired with. The Bot replies back to the user with the answers of the other participants.
Bottle Bot's prompts and replies offer a peek into the lives of 3 different strangers matched to the user to be from different groups, geographically and/or socio-politically. The tool is part introspective, part reflective by the qualities of the Question Bank.
Since Bottle Bot acts as a mediator between the participants, the conversation stays free from hate messages and abuse by only sharing the reply to the Daily Prompt with other users.
Update: Making a proof of concept Bot!