Plurality and Well-being
LGBTQ community in plurality.
UX Research | UX Design | UI Design
This is an interactive installation where the users face some controversial and complicated issue of constructing identity. There are seven circles that contain words related to gender as an identity. The circles include words about romantic attraction, sexual orientation, range of gender expression, and gender identity. The users can create different combinations and learn about the diversity of the people. The information provided as a result of the combination will help the people understand how perfectly natural the phenomenon is. Straight people never really understand how complicated it is to understand oneself with respect to gender. There are many people out there who have come out and become successful despite the struggle. There also many people still struggling to try to find out who there are. There is a lot of research that goes behind their identity as sometimes they have no idea why they are that way. I went ahead with this idea as I wanted people to understand that as soon as we start learning more about gender identity, it will not only help us construct our own identity, but it will also help the people struggling to come out just because of fear
of being different. The interaction happens by rotating the circles and coming up with a combination that best suits yourself or your identity that you are curious about. It includes a dictionary that will help the users through words they don’t understand. In the end, it will show traits and stereotypes of the identity and personalities who belong to the same identity. This will help them know more about their identity and take efforts to break the existing stereotypes. Each circle also has a blank space where the audience could add anything that they want in addition to the existing words. Gender is one of the most fundamental aspects of one’s identity. It deeply influences every part of one’s life. Sometimes this aspect is narrowly defined and rigidly enforced. The people who are outside these norms face a lot of challenges. Even a small change in the aspect becomes disapproval. With rising empathy and thoughtful consideration of the diversity and uniqueness and validity of every person’s experience of self, we can accept diversity of people into plurality. This will not only help in the inclusion of people, it will help people to be comfortable in society and celebrate who they are just like everyone else does.
INSPIRATION
The identity wheel has been used as a part of inclusive learning in lots of colleges. It is an activity sheet that helps students reflect and identify themselves socially and how others perceive them according to these identities. The student is asked to fill various social identities in the worksheet and then further prioritize according to their self-perception and others' perception of them. In addition to the social identity, they are also asked to fill a personal identity wheel which helps the student reflect on the dissonance between social and personal identity. To encourage students to consider their identities critically and how identities are more or less keenly felt in different social contexts. These activities usually take place in the classroom and universities to put forth the barriers to inclusion. This also helps us understand how we don't consider some aspects of us as our identity as we consider it to be a privilege and then normalize other identities. For example, if English is the first language of a student, they will rarely think of language as a part of their identity, but someone else might be identified with the language they speak. This helps build communities and encourage empathy among each other. It also shows the diversity in the classroom and sensitizes students with what they have shared.
Ars Magna Zairja is an instrument used by medieval Arab astrologers to generate ideas by mechanical means, by combining numerical values associated with letters and categories to arrive at new ways of thinking. This device captivated the Mallorcan Ramón Llull, using it in his ARS MAGNA to combine a series of categories around concentric circles, expanding the possibilities of knowledge. He believed that by creating various combinations of different existing concepts we can derive new truths. Ars Magna was made of paper, we could rotate the circles and make different combinations of concepts and categories.
PAPER PROTOTYPE
SCREENS
Making people aware
The idea was to make an interactive installation that will make people aware of their identity and tell them that it is perfectly fine to be who they are. It will talk about the LGBT community and their importance as well in a way that will empower people to accept them and tell that it is perfectly okay to accept who they are
Explain the youth
Breaking the stereotype of LGBT to be “adults”, questioning whether should a princess always fall in love with a prince? Telling the young adults that it is perfectly okay for a princess to fall for a any other girl. Creating books where people can change the characters, the way they look and who they fall in love with.
Giving a role model
A platform where people can read about the success stories of different LGBT people. Know more about the community through the platform
Gender diverse public places
Include the community while designing signs for a specified gender. Deciding how to use the silhouette icons where not only male and female but consider the whole diversity.
Gender diverse digital platforms
Sometimes, some people are not exactly sure about their gender identity and sexual preferences. Asking their gender for any kind of information can be a little hurting for them. We need to keep our options open and think about how we can make the digital platform like profile avatar’s, marital status on social media, gender revelation on social media etc. I would want to study about how I can think of the same as a subtle way of questioning and giving more options so that everyone is comfortable while answering.