A social networking program that requires people to physically interact before becoming friends. Making friends through events that people that have the same interests or hobbies and not judging the book by its cover.
Should socializing begin with a glance of appearances? Can we not judge the book by its cover and connect through interests and hobbies? Are current social networking apps desensitizing our abilities to socialize in reality?
Existing problems
No real bond – misinformation
online – offline (first impression)
Neglect of the real world
Lack of community – the feeling of membership
Proposal for the innovative online community
Goals
Concept of simply doing an activity that you would interest yourself and meeting friends during that activity; reality before virtuality
Offline interactions are often more genuine compared to online
Pushing users to socialize in reality instead of mindless scrolling
Creating an intentional healthy interaction and then sprawling a sense of community
Unique
Being true to the user’s personalities; their interests lead users to friends with the same interests
Urban/cultural exploration
Creating a strong bond for the community through offline interaction
Similar Apps
Meetup – Meetup is a great place to start when you’re looking for a whole new ring of friends, or after you just moved to a new city.
Atleto – ATLETO is like Tinder for athletes looking to make friends. You can choose between 40 sports happening in your area and request to join an event.
REAL – What makes Real different from other friendship apps is that you swipe on personality and not appearance, so you actually don’t get to see your new friend’s face until you both match.
There are a lot of apps that allow you to go meet other people and perhaps make new friends, but the process of these apps is not coherent to true human interaction. Creating profiles and using the appearance of profile photos can mask who you are.
One of our major ideas for the program is the fundamental change in how we use online social media platforms. Instead of using a virtual medium to promote a virtual lifestyle, we want it to promote a real lifestyle.
The user’s interests (a form of their personality) are guiding them to activities that they might enjoy. And once the user gets to a destination, they can see people who come for the same activities and choose to interact with them.
Users can also use VR within the program to explore different parts of a city and learn about interesting histories of a particular location, even interact with virtual characters significant to that location.
We hope that by creating this platform where people who have the same interests are brought together, the connection would be stronger and create a healthier online community. Using a modern platform and making friends in the old fashion way.
“Xiachufang” is an
entry in to Chinese home cuisine on the internet. It is a mobile application
that provides the purchase of ingredients, kitchen supplies, and the query and
most importantly, sharing of recipes. The online recipe sharing community was a
relatively new concept when the idea was introduced. But as of August 2016,
there are more than 600,000 original recipe contents, and 20 million gourmet
works have been uploaded to this online platform.
Among them, the
iPhone version of “Xiachufang” was selected as the App Store application and
was selected as a demonstration app by the Apple Store offline experience store
and was selected as the App Store’s best 2013 gourmet app in China.
After launching
the marketplace business at the end of 2014, it has become a food e-commerce
platform for suppliers and consumers who value quality; in the field of kitchen
appliances, it has revealed its dominant position, and has established
strategic cooperation with brands such as Panasonic covering sales and brand
promotion. The selling of personalized quality foods and ingredients highlights
the vision and tonality of the kitchen selection. Many long-tail products have
become popular models through the push of the application. In addition to
product brands, many channel brands and e-commerce platforms have also become
suppliers of “Xiachufang”, such as Yiguo in the fresh produce sector, spring
sowing, and Sam’s member stores in the imported food sector, highlighting the
entry status of “Xiachufang”.
The kitchen UGC
gourmet content and KOL cultivated by a large number of platforms can provide
value-added services for cooperative products, provide more help for consumers’
purchase decisions, and the combination of media and e-commerce is an advantage
that traditional e-commerce does not have. Because of the advantages of users,
the kitchen can focus on the platform building and online user experience in an
asset-light manner, while leaving the storage, logistics, and packaging to the
supplier.
The Community:
Gender:
More than 70% are female users. From a cultural perspective, it is not
surprising to me that there are still more women who are cooking in China. Even
though the Chinese modern household do not hold the same values of the older
generation, there are still societal expectations that have prejudices of women
cooking in the household. So, the design of the app are targeted more towards
the “feminine” taste.
Age:
The main users of the Xiachufang app are people who were boring in the 80s and
90s. 40% of users are in the age range of 31-35 years old, have a certain
number of working years, most of them may be married, is the main people
cooking at home. The second most users are 25-30 years old people. Soon after
leaving college campuses, some rented houses, live alone, and they may cook
their own meals or often call for takeaways (one of the most lucrative and
popular ways of eating in China); some may live with their parents and may not
cook their own meals. People who are 36-40 use the app noticeably less. This
may be because this older population are more stable in their lives and have
figured out their own set of cooking recipes, so they do not need to refer to
recipes often.
Industry/Occupation: Weibo users who pay attention to the Xiachufang app are educated, and a large part of them are from overseas. It can be speculated that when people want to cook Chinese food, no one around them in a foreign setting can help. Looking at the data, there are higher education professions such as science and technology, media, design, culture, banking, and the ranks are also managers and directors that use the app. There are also some people who are freelancers (including housewives and husbands) and Taobao sellers (who have relatively flexible time in their daily schedule). Among the users who pay attention to the kitchen, housewives account for 61.94%, followed by blue-collar workers, workplace workers (the proportion of which is close), student party, and social elites. Therefore, users who can roughly launch Xiachufang are mainly highly educated, ordinary professionals, and housewives.
Pros and Cons (demonstrated through
scenarios)
Pros
1. What if I want to cook my own food but do not know how? For a lot of
us, that usually means asking our parents. For example, there was a commercial
for the China Merchants Bank called “Tomato Scrambled Egg”. The
commercial is about Chinese students who are studying abroad that wanted to cook
the dish. Regardless of time difference, they wake their parents in the middle
of the night and get step-by-step instructions on the phone. But if the parents
or other people who can guide them are not around, they are helpless. With
Xiachufang, you do not have to wake up your parents at all, you can easily learn
the step by step instructions based on the recipe, and you can even refer to
pictures and videos in that online community or even chat with the writer of
the recipe.
2. A person who is proficient in cooking arrives home at the end of a day
exhausted, looks at what is in the refrigerator and wonders what to make with
the produce in hand. For these situations, the person will rely on experience
and cook some dishes that have been repeatedly made, and the family might
complain that they are tired of eating the repetitive dish. With this app,
there is a wide choice of recipes posted by the large community that can give
the user a wide variety of recipes.
3. Food lovers (influencers) who have successfully completed a cooking masterpiece
and feel that they are particularly proud. What do they usually do? It may
be taking photos and sharing with friends/Weibo, harvesting a wave of likes,
but people loose interest after a while, and users will be tired of taking
photos. It is not the same when it is posted to Xiachufang. The community of
the app are very enthusiastic about cooking. They will discuss with each other
about whether it is better to change a seasoning or how creating a different
atmosphere can change the taste of the food. They can even get the recognition
from gourmet cooks and reviews.
Cons
1. Unfriendly to novices: Most recipes are uploaded by users
spontaneously. Veterans often use words such as “appropriate” and
“a little”, and it is difficult for novices to control the amount of
seasonings, which often determines the success of the dish. Therefore,
generally those who can successfully cook under the instructions of the
community are those who have a little knowledge or talent in cooking.
Suggestion:
The most important thing for a novice is the need for someone to give hands-on
guidance, just like a parent giving a pointer or two around them. So, the app
could open a live broadcast teaching function. In addition, some ingredients
and seasonings may not be readily available, and some people will point out
whether there are suitable substitutes that will not affect the taste of the
final work.
2. There is no recipe category: I just mentioned that anyone can share
recipes. Although you can search for recipes by searching, it is a very
cluttered community. It is more convenient to know the ingredients or dish
names, but it is not convenient to find a certain cuisine. Or a specific type
of recipe.
Suggestion: They could make a
partition according to the recipe classification on the discovery page, such as
by region, season, etc., and then display the user uploaded works. Sorting into
the corresponding locations can have more detailed options to help users get
more inspiration.
Conclusion (Goal of the App):
1. Give young people who are new to
society, do not have much cooking experience, and don’t want to torment themselves
by making good food a new way to socialize. One can find simple and
easy-to-start recipes in Xiachufang to get started quickly;
2. Help house wives/husbands
maintain the health of their families, as well as find new interest with the
online cooking community. Comprehensive recipes in the app can let them show
their skills and make a variety of delicious food.
3. Gourmet enthusiasts love to
share their experiences, but before there was no special platform to specialize
in making their own food. You can find like-minded people in the Xiachufang to
share, communicate and grow together.
“Talking about … television programmes is a part of many people’s social live. … Conversations were able to make use of the shared reference point … established by television.” Even though we already know much about the social aspects of television, there is still a need to gather deeper insights into the social practice of using different media technologies. The technical infrastructure is growing extremely fast, and more and more options to use media are being offered to the user (video on demand, sharing options). In light of emergency and fast-growing technological changes, it is important to understand domestic life in relation to the different media offers.
The effect of massive cellphone use is more severe than we think. Researchers have made connections between over usage on smartphones and reduced memory, shortened attention span and reduce cognitive abilities. This 24-hour challenge has been surprisingly difficult and enlightening as a young student. I found that the time spent away from a smartphone put me in a new perspective not only regarding phone use but also plans of the semester. Constant connectivity has taken away the time we spend with ourselves.
I started my challenge before I went to bed on a Friday night, which is usually the night that I stay up the latest and the first thing that I notice is my ability to fall asleep. Phone use before bed has been a part of my routine for a long time now, especially because of my long-distance relationship with my partner. As I reflected upon the exercise, I concluded that my plans for turning off my phone have given me peace of mind; that I don’t have to check my phone for the next 24 hours which made me sleep better. But on the other hand, I was extremely bored starting the next morning.
Waking up to a full night of sleep without any alarms was invigorating, but the habitual checking of the phone was met with the disappointment of a black screen. And that was when my mindset had to change. I had to plan my day around not having a smartphone, which was honestly made easier with a laptop. But still, we often underappreciate the convenience of having these incredible technologies at the tips of our fingers. Things like ordering food, gGPS, and online shopping aside, our ability to connect with friends and family have been deeply intertwined with our phones. Even though I’ve suffered the fidgeting effects of a cellphone cleanse, I felt that I had more time in the day than usual. I was able to utilize and effectively use that time on schoolwork as well as self-work, physically and mentally. I was less distracted from just doing whatever I am doing. This was great for a weekend day where we might not have as much to do and all we had to deal with was boredom, but I feel that daily life without my phone might cause problems logistically speaking. Perhaps less multitasking is better for the quality of activities whether it be work or leisure.
The society that we live in now demands us to be everywhere at once. Smartphones might provide a major benefit regarding connectivity, convenience, and efficiency, but has it changed us for the better or left us more fragmented and with less meaning? We always talk about smartphones as one of the main points of problems in our lives, but I never actually had the experience until this exercise. The time I spent away from my smartphone was a struggle but also enlightening. When using technology, we often focus optimistically on all the things it does for us. But where might it do the opposite, taking away our human abilities?
