Macro UX • Week 2
Brief: Create a storytelling method that facilitates heartfelt & engaging communication over time, at distance & at scale
Research Methods: Directed Storytelling, Rapid Ideation
Team: Diya • Mustafa • Rachel • ShanShan • Jeanne • Emilia • Asli • Grania • Izzy • Karolis • Wanrui
Primary Research
The team branched into sub-groups to gather people’s stories of meaningful connections formed in the workspace, learning environments and during recreational activities.
The subtle ways we connect
It starts with a name. A teacher memorises each student’s name within the first week, transforming an unfamiliar classroom into a place where each student feels recognised and valued. That moment of personal recognition, hearing one’s name spoken familiarly, shifts a sterile classroom into a welcoming space of belonging.
Sometimes, it starts with a favour. One participant recalled assisting a classmate with groceries after an injury. This small act of kindness blossomed into a five-year friendship founded on quiet, consistent care. Meaningful relationships often grow subtly from moments of noticing and stepping up when others overlook.
Occasionally, connection begins with humour. A playful joke about someone’s unusual lunch choices, a shared snicker across a crowded room; these small exchanges lower social barriers. One participant described how a simple joke turned a stranger into an inseparable friend, making unfamiliarity melt away into shared amusement.
Other times, connection arises from shared struggles. Late nights spent working toward tight deadlines transformed stress into bonding rituals ; ordering food together, laughing through exhaustion. These bonds, formed through collective perseverance rather than just shared success, endured long after the project ended.
Patterns emerged through these stories. Passion, humour, effort, kindness, and shared experience — these were the invisible threads that wove people together. It wasn’t about forcing connection, but about creating spaces where these small, meaningful moments could emerge naturally.
Ideation and Conceptualisation
With this point of view, we individually generated ideas and pooled these together. The final directions we decided upon were:
Each group delved deeper into making these initial ideas come to life. I decided to work on the spatial design approach since that is my personal area of interest.
Concept Note
The Hive of Connections is an interactive, evolving spatial mixed media installation designed to capture the stories, shared moments, and evolving culture of a workplace community.
Our directed storytelling uncovered a simple truth: genuine connections emerge from humour, kindness, and shared moments, beyond structured interactions. These insights directly inform the design of the Hive of Connections, an installation that binds people and stories with Invisible Threads.
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To me, this space almost feels like a physicalisation of the Directed Storytelling research method.
Feedback
We were nudged to explore tactile media for exploring how the space would look visually, with peg boards as an example. And this idea would work over time and scale, but how does it address Distance? Could we define distance in a way to answer this? How can we integrate technology to include remote/hybrid working scenarios?
Next Steps
With these questions, we decided to build on our idea with deeper benchmarking on how we may include technology delightfully, build an initial prototype, and user test this it in common areas of LCC.
In Retrospect
I personally prefer a more generative brainstorming phase where based on a mutual design vision, we collectively build multiple ideas. I felt this was overlooked in the project because the team felt aligned on the initial idea, so we spent time on building upon that itself.
