Culture Shock

Design-a-Thon, 2023

Connecting individuals with diverse cultural events, bringing communities together to explore backgrounds, cuisines, and history

Duration

2 Days

My Role

UI Designer

Researcher

Team

Hanh Binh Nguyen

Daliana Solis Solis

Emily Tan

Jaime Markkern

Disciplines

UI Design

Comparative Analysis

Prototyping

Tools

Figma

The Team and My Role

The idea for Culture Shock was developed by a team of four students from the University of California, Irvine during a 2-day Design-a-Thon event.

I served as both a researcher and designer, conducting research to identify existing applications as references and examining how they bring communities together. Additionally, I contributed to the sketching and prototyping of the app.

Problem and Background

Building Community, Diversity, and Inclusivity Through a Centralized Platform

Prompt

Create a platform fostering community, diversity, and inclusivity.

Background

Our team recognized that we often learned about community events through various sources, such as word of mouth, school announcements, and social media, rather than having a single platform to discover them. Surprisingly, we found numerous events online, emphasizing the need for a centralized application to display such events.

Inspiration

I was inspired by the diverse communities that exist in various realms such as music, art, religion, and within the city. One particular community that stood out to me was the electronic dance music (EDM) community. Specifically how Insomniac, an event promoter, successfully brought music lovers together through their application, which showcases EDM events.

The Solution

Diverse Cultural Event Discover App

Objective

A mobile app that offers information on cultural events in the community, city, and state. The app connects people, enriching their understanding of different cultures, including their backgrounds, cuisines, and historical and social events.

Features

Event Discovery

Event Details

Calendar Integration

The Sketches

Exploring Events, Event Overview, and Calendar

The idea was to make Culture Shock a mobile application where users can explore and discover a variety of cultural events in their area.

To obtain diverse design perspectives, each team member created sketches for the main application pages, including the home, search, calendar, and account pages. We then combined our sketches to create a final set, which would become the guideline for creating our wireframes.

Home + Details Page

This page provides users with a view of events in their area, categorized under genres and types. Upon clicking an event, users can view detailed information such as the event's name, location, time, date, contact details, and more.

Event Search Page

Users can explore various events such as food events, historical presentations, social gatherings, and more. When the user clicks on a category or searches, they will be directed to a page displaying relevant events. Here, they can further filter the events.

Calendar

Users can save events and view them all. When the event day is near, the user will be reminded. Users can also view these events in a Calendar view.

Wireframes to Mockups

Transforming sketches into Wireframes and Mockups

Log-in

Home Page

Discover / Search

Search With Filters

Event Information

Calendar

Event Saved List

Prototype

View Figma Prototype

Conclusion

Design-a-Thon Challenges: Time Constraints

Culture Shock's goal is to unite people, foster diversity, and build a sense of community by serving as a centralized platform where users can explore events.

Due to time constraints, the team had to prioritize features, which meant we had to abandon the idea of an online community chat feature. This feature would have allowed users to post their own events and discuss with others through a post chat. Furthermore, the time constraint prevented us from making this a case study; we were unable to collect data, conduct user testing, and refine the designs.