The Age of Empathy: designing for a community
Background: What happens to these cultural assets when students come to University? Are they swept aside by the homogenous culture of Western design education, or made irrelevant by the cultural values of London, of the European mega-city of the (post-Brexit) U.K.? Or are they renegotiated in the terms of newly-forming communities and an urban learning environment in constant flux?
The brief: Consider the problem, not as one that can be easily solved, but what design thinkers call a "wicked problem" - one that is so complex that it has no single solution and requires "continuous research in order to be kept within our understanding." Generate prototypes for interventions that might help build empathy and resilience amid the ephemeral conditions of Central Saint Martins.
How did we solve the problem? We created an app called Martin. He is a useful tool because it creates a VideoID (including audio name pronunciation + background details), contains a database of existing students and VideoIDs and students are able to share their ID through social media.
