Using social media to get small communities to interact across different age groups. For the thorough ethnographic study, we decided to work on Parsi community.
We started with a Secondary study which suggested that the Parsi community is extremely active with social events where the young meet ups, rich culture of playing board games, food and often community get together. Everyone lives together. Therefore the Parsi communities are defined and known by areas For, e.g., Rustam is from the Bandra Parsi society. (Identified by which part of the city they live and which community). Every town in India has their Parsi compounds. As the community is incredibly generous and wealthy, they are taken care off by the Parsi organization. If anyone wants to move away from the religion, culture, and society by marrying into another community or settling outside ethe community, result in boycotting the community and can no more utilize the comforts provided. Therefore we concluded that Parsi's are well united. We realized that somewhere this might make them as an Orthodox community.
We conducted a contextual inquiry with some of the current society generals, writers from Parsi magazine, families and the younger generation in Parsi compounds and outside. To understand how openly can they talk about issues related to communication and networking in the society and is it a real need.
The definition of who is, and is not a Parsi is a matter of great contention within the Zoroastrian community in India. It is accepted that a Parsi is a person who:
User study helped in gathering insights to shape a social media platform for the Parsi community to increase activity and engagement in the community. Community awareness & engagement can happen by the interaction between elders and the younger generation, hence both of them were our target users.
From ethnography, literature review, contextual inquiry, focused interview with a stakeholder from different age groups, I identified habits, culture, way of living, social interaction within the community.
Web application to build your family trees and link them to each other. An app to understand your roots and greatness of the family and feeling proud about it. A platform to read/share stories and legends about great Parsi leaders, travelers, community contributors, historic events, myriad events, images; help build personal connections within the community.
The idea is to tie a string with a connection (first/second/third/golden etc.)
Home page to show only first family level. Zoom out will show the relevant part of the tree of the user.
Updates about family member pictures, comments, new members, etc.
Contents related to stories the user has added, could be images, text and videos are viewed here.
Notification of other users adding content to the same stories is shown here.
Can view the users through the strings and links the profile has.