Monat: März 2021

Why is it important?

What if you didn’t have to work to earn a living? What if you could concentrate on other things like hobbies, leisure time or family instead of your job? Sounds a bit utopian, maybe it is. But it is precisely the concept of an unconditional basic income that has gained enormous importance in recent years. The idea of UBI (Universal Basic Income) is that every citizen, regardless of what or whether they work, receives a certain basic amount of money on a regular basis. The arguments for such a system range from „financial independence“ to „combating the high-income economy“. The most important argument today, however, is a different one. The thesis of various experts, such as historian Yuval Noah Harari, goes something like this: Robots, machines and AI will replace so many  jobs in the future and the average requirements for jobs will reach such a high technical level that it will lead to large-scale unemployment. Many people will lose their jobs. These are not only „simple“ jobs like truck drivers but also more complex academic jobs like radiologists. This large unemployment will consequently lead to much poverty, hunger, death, riots and unhappiness. This is exactly why many proponents of the UBI, such as the American presidential candidate Andrew Yang, propose a robot tax. Companies that replace many human jobs with machines, robots and AI would have to pay a robot tax, which in turn would finance the UBI. 

Voting in Switzerland 

In 2016 the swiss population had the chance to vote on the basic income, which led to heated discussions at a national level, but also aroused great interest abroad. Many questions emerged on how we define work, why we work, and how the future of work will look due to digitalisation. Even if Switzerland is considered a politically conservative and tradition-conscious country, it was the first worldwide with such a referendum. But the idea of a basic income has been around for a while. The referendum resulted in 76.9% of votes against the introduction of a basic income. But still, every fourth person was in favor. The idea was to offer every inhabitant of Switzerland a certain amount of money to guarantee their existence- without consideration. Regardless of the job, wealth, or age. Back then, it was not yet certain who would get how much money but it was considered to provide 2500.- per month for adults and 600.- per month for children. 

The opponents directly argued that no one works at all, as people would only do what they want. Further, they worried about how to finance it and how society as a whole would change. For many, a fundamental change in the economic and social system was not considered. Because this is the model of success for many, but not for all.

The advocates argued that people would still work and not only for money but for meaning and pleasure. Therefore people would be more motivated to work, which increases productivity and fosters innovation because the personal risk is less. Additionally, it would simplify the social system in saving money (for unemployment insurance, pension, child benefit) and it would relieve administration. All in all, it would be a fairer society because of an equal financial basis. The creative people who led the campaign for the basic income had outrageous ideas. They gave thousand 10 banknotes for free at the train station in Zurich, put 8 million 5 räppler (0.05 swiss francs) on the federal plaza in bern and with the slogan“ what would you do if your income were taken care of?“ they wanted to raise awareness in society.

Those actions were seen by the opponents as creative and time-consuming but as a reason for not having enough arguments.

Then and now 

In a strict sense, the intellectual history of universal basic income is roughly half a century old.

The idea of a state-run basic income can be dated back to the early 16th century when Sir Thomas More’s Utopia depicted a society in which every person receives a guaranteed income.

In 1930, John Maynard Keynes articulated a utopian vision of „technological unemployment.“ He argued that we would leave behind „the struggle for subsistence“ and that work would cease to be a necessity. Labor’s obsolescence would not just free up time and energy, but be morally uplifting:

„I see us free, therefore, to return to some of the most sure and certain principles of religion and traditional virtue—that avarice is a vice, that the exaction of usury is a misdemeanour, and the love of money is detestable.“

Keynes did not mention a basic income, assuming instead that standards of living would rise inexorably until, around 2030 or so, his languid utopia would materialize. Supporters believe a basic income could hurry the process along. They see creative people, freed from the need to take jobs they don’t want, contributing artistic, entrepreneurial, and spiritual vitality to society.

Basic income was discussed in several parts of the world from the 1980s and forward, but was in many cases portrayed as a rather utopian proposal. However, in recent years the idea has seemingly come to the forefront more than before. The referendum about basic income in Switzerland 2016 was covered in the media worldwide. Even though the activist in the YES-campaign ultimately lost, it was nevertheless a campaign that made headlines.

Imagining a 21st Century Basic Income

Today the idea of a basic income has again entered the mainstream. Unsurprisingly, given its scattered lineage, supporters make different arguments from diverse ideological vantage points.

In January 2019, Finland concluded a two-year basic income experiment that attempted to counteract the unemployment trap. The country’s welfare office sent €560 ($635) per month to 2,000 randomly selected working-age unemployed people. They didn’t lose the benefit if they started working, nor did the experiment affect their eligibility to receive unemployment insurance in excess of the basic income. Results from the first year found that recipients were happier and healthier than they were on unemployment, but that the basic income had little impact on their unemployment status.

Also as there exists the surge of technological advancements and the fear of a rapid change in the job market as many jobs become automated, the idea for a Universal Basic Income becomes more relevant.

Techno-pessimists: Save the future

Fears of machine-induced mass unemployment are as old as the power loom. The idea that our inventions will render us obsolete and dead has not panned out so far. Technology has enhanced human productivity, not replaced it. Until recently nearly everyone farmed; now fewer than 1% of Americans do, but they keep busy and the U.S. produces a food surplus. Despite the phrasing—“this time is different.“ Some of Silicon Valley’s leading lights are backing a basic income to counteract the automation their sector is creating, including Elon Musk, who has called artificial intelligence „our biggest existential threat.“ 

UBI got a boost in 2019-20 from Democratic presidential candidate Andrew Yang, whose „Freedom Dividend“—a cornerstone of his campaign—would pay $1,000 a month to every American over the age of 18. His reason for proposing a UBI: „…the smartest people in the world now predict that a third of all working Americans will lose their job to automation in the next 12 years. Our current policies are not equipped to handle this crisis.“ A March 2017 study by Daron Acemoglu of MIT and Pascual Restrepo of Boston University found that each robot reduces local employment by 6.2 workers.Automation has been put forward as an explanation for the persistent gap between economic growth and wage growth in the U.S. since the 1970s.

Things are liable to get worse. A 2013 paper by Oxford’s Carl B. Frey and Michael A. Osborne found that 47% of U.S. employment is at risk of computerization. The most vulnerable jobs are hardly confined to the factory floor. Professions facing a 90%-plus probability of algorithmic obsolescence include tax preparers, waiters, paralegals, loan officers, credit analysts, and 166 others. Algorithms already outperform doctors at diagnosing certain ailments, and autonomous vehicle prototypes are breathing down 5 million professional drivers‘ necks.

One solution would be to grow out of these problems, producing twice the output rather than laying off half the workforce. That is a tall order—the IMF projected that advanced economies will grow at 1.6% in 2020-21, and that was before the coronavirus pandemic—but even if it’s possible, it’s potentially dangerous. Climate change already threatens to drive millions of refugees away from rising seas and spreading deserts. The planet could buckle under a carbon-intensive doubling of global GDP.

Utopians

Other futurists look at the prospect of mass unemployment and wonder what all the fuss is about: When robots shuttle dinner from kitchen to table or travellers from airport to hotel, are they yanking waiters‘ and cab drivers‘ livelihoods away—or liberating them from tedium? Arguably the latter, if they receive a basic income sizable enough to live comfortably, and especially if they use their newfound free time in creative and socially beneficial ways.

In his 2017 Harvard commencement speech, Mark Zuckerberg said, „we should explore ideas like universal basic income to make sure that everyone has a cushion to try new ideas,“ stressing that if he hadn’t been „lucky“ enough to enjoy free time, he couldn’t have founded Facebook.

Basic income also could address the issue of women’s largely unpaid work. 

Relation to Social Design

When you think about the impact of the UBI on society, you realise that it will have a big impact on our social structures. The concept would be an effective way to fight poverty and allow everyone to live with dignity. No one would have to rely on welfare or illegal activities to survive. No one would have to take jobs that do not match their personal skills and aptitudes to secure their livelihood. Instead, people would be able to do work that they really like and where their strengths can be used in a meaningful way. This would possibly also create professions that we do not yet know. Individual freedom would grow as a result. 

But the UBI could also have negative effects. One problem of an unconditional basic income could be that no one would want to do unattractive jobs. This could lead to these jobs having to be done in the future by illegal immigrants or other people who are not entitled to a basic income. Critics of the concept even fear that many people would no longer do any work at all if they were covered by the unconditional basic income. They would then have to be supported by the working society.

Written by Andri Zindel, Ayko Neil Kehl, Ever Bright Chakma and Melanie Arnold

“We can afford it” – What the project addresses 

Did you know that one-third of all food in Switzerland ends up in waste? Per year 2.6 million tonnes of food waste are generated in our country. 28% of these 2.6 million tonnes come from households. The reasoning, therefore, is for example:

• that we buy more food than we need, 
• that we cook more than we need and throw away the leftovers, 
• or that we forget the food we have in our fridges.

The reason why we behave this way is “because we can afford it” (Was ist Food Waste, n.d.). However, that does not apply to every Swiss citizen. 8.7% of the Swiss population was affected by poverty in the year 2019 (Bundesamt für Statistik, n.d.).

With our project, we want to make a contribution and change the behavior of people. At the same time, we want to give people the opportunity to help others by donating food to social institutions. 

“Good to eat” Project

With “Good to eat” checking the expiry date is easier and keeps the user in the loop by reminding them that they have specific food products that would go bad if not consumed soon. This helps the user to be more responsible for their food management. This application would work effortlessly with a QR code at the cashpoint when grocery shopping, the list of groceries with their expiry date will be shown in it. When “Good to eat” sends the user the notification that the product is about to expire the consumer can choose to finish before or with the aid of the app, choose a non-profit organization or a soup kitchen to which the utensils can be sent or deposited in. This way, the problem of food waste can be managed and even contribute to social causes. 

Have you not yet fully understood how it works? Check out our user journey:

Customer Journey – full page

How “Good to eat” contributes to a Social Issue

So how would “Good to eat” contribute to reducing our food waste? 

First of all, the app will remind its users that they have food in their fridge that is about to expire. How often do we forget we actually have something in the fridge and then find out too late when the expiry date has been long overdue? As a result, the user becomes more aware of what products they have at home and therefore is more likely to not let food go to waste.

By reminding users of what they have in their fridge, the app not only shows the users the food that is about to go bad but also makes them aware of their purchase behavior. If they continually are reminded of groceries that go bad, it will also help them to better plan and reduce their consumption.

If foods, however, cannot be planned in anymore to be eaten, the possibility of bringing them to a social institution will prevent them from ending up in the trash. This also benefits the social institutions, as they are given food. Usually, these social institutions don’t have many financial resources, therefore this could benefit them. 

Furthermore, as we have seen, almost 10% of Switzerland’s society is affected by poverty and numbers are likely to go up as a result of COVID-19. These people could then also benefit from this project.

In conclusion, “Good to eat” does not only benefit the single person as they can use their resources better and consume more sustainably, but it also has an impact on the whole society. One aspect is the one that food can be distributed to where it’s needed and the other aspect that we treat our resources more carefully.

By Ann Maria, Kevin, Sophie, Jeanne

Sources:

Bundesamt für Statistik. (n.d.). Armut. Retrieved March 22, 2021, from https://www.bfs.admin.ch/bfs/de/home/statistiken/wirtschaftliche-soziale-situation-bevoelkerung/soziale-situation-wohlbefinden-und-armut/armut-und-materielle-entbehrungen/armut.html 

Was ist FOOD Waste? (n.d.). Retrieved March 22, 2021, from https://foodwaste.ch/was-ist-food-waste/ 

Nowadays, far too little attention is paid to Sex Education or the importance of it. In many cultures, Sex Education is considered taboo and not accepted by society. Most are left to this topic themselves, which led to people being unenlightened as a whole. Sex Education is currently – and this most assumingly globally – seen to enlighten young people about sexual intercourse and safe sex, but not about sexual healthcare and important related topics, such as human sexual behavior, sexual anatomy, emotional relations, sexual harassment, and much more. The argument that goes hand in hand with this notion is that excessive knowledge from informal and unorganized sources such as free access internet-based informative sources about the same might lead to risk-involved sexual and promiscuous behavior among the teens. We believe that this issue not only lies in society but in education and therefore needs to be taken into account as an important Social Design project, that eventually affects everyone.

Opportunities

Implementing Sex Education into a school-based curriculum is important because schools play a significant role in preparing young people by guiding and encouraging them – for their potential social roles and obligations in the future. Furthermore, schools offer an open and safe learning environment, reaching a large number of young people from many diverse backgrounds. Adding Sex Education into the curriculum could eventually enable a positive and lifelong effect on society – since it should be addressed formally and informally. Another opportunity is the reinforcement of young people’s self-esteem and their interactions in society, through open communication, building confidence, and normalization of these taboo topics. 

As already mentioned, Sex Education nowadays mostly teaches about safe sex. Many are not aware of the interrelated topics and concerns that come with sex education. Many are not even educated about their own body, not to mention the opposite sex. We believe that sexual healthcare is at its very core – building confidence in our own body, as well as sexual behavior in society. The Federal Centre for Health Education (BZgA), in Cologne, Germany, published a proposal for this exact issue – integrating sex education into school-based curriculums. They designed a concept of the topics, that gives a great overview of all the areas of Sex Education – since it is a topic affected everywhere in society. The topics that need to be addressed are summarized in the following table.

Proposal

We would like to address the need by highlighting that Sex Education is a basic human right of every individual starting at a younger age, as health education and promotion, disease prevention, and risk reduction are essential components for helping people stay healthy, safe, and ready to learn.

As some of us have previously gained experience with Sex Education, they know it mainly as a teacher’s job. However, we have looked into the matter that teachers should bring in staff from external agencies for a consultation beforehand or for support during the lessons in order to be able to cover the needs and problems of the students more efficiently. Since various students have pointed out the importance of sex education offering scientific facts, helping kids feel identified with the matter, and being ludic and informative, it should involve experts, as they are specialized in the area of communication with different people, genders, and especially kids or young adults.

In our proposal, the trigger for the idea-generating was Ted Talks, as they are perceived positively due to their seamless and informative nature. People love listening to the speakers; they are short and cohesive. These talks leave a lasting impression on the audience and inspire them to initiate change in the topics explored. However, we had a broader contextual discussion about important issues that need to be considered and added. As our research emphasized appropriate information, learning strategies, teaching methods and materials, basic knowledge, health-promoting choices and behaviors, and societal constraints and influences, we have construed our idea through the aspect of Ted Talks, because it meets the specific needs. However, our points also include the strategies designed to personalize information and engage students; therefore, we have reconstructed our idea into an interactive talk, allowing teachers, students, and parents to take part. Since Sex Education is considered a taboo subject and therefore we might face resistance from parents, it is also a basic human right that we want to cover, which is why we came up with the idea of organizing interactive and open talks to also ease the fear of some parents first.

Stakeholders‘ Impacts

1. School
School is where Sex Education is conducted; therefore, it is the main agent of Sex Education. In close consultation with external experts, the school selects what students need for each grade and provides a forum for students to discuss the topic freely. Unlike traditional Sex Education, which has focused on contraception, by giving students information about various topics such as the biological side of the body, emotions, and sexual ethics, schools can give students about what they need. Also, various problems that have occurred because of distorted sexual knowledge can be solved.

2. Parents
Parents should also participate in Sex Education with students. Schools and households are the places that have the greatest impact on students‘ mindsets, and parents should be able to help students when they ask for help and deliver the right knowledge to them. As mentioned above, sex has been taboo, and this conservative social atmosphere prevents discussion about sex within the house. By participating in Sex Education together, parents can better understand the concerns and thoughts of their children. It can resolve the conservative social atmosphere, and it allows open-conversations about sex-related topics to continue not only at school but also at home.

3. Students
Students should be the main players of the interactive talk. Students‘ active participation is required to avoid one-way delivery of information from the expert. Students will participate in everything from designing Sex Education programs for themselves to participating in classes in the program. Interactive Ted Talk allows students to have more knowledge about sex-related topics and, therefore, they will have a right perception of themselves and the others as respected objects.

4. External Experts
Sex Education Experts should participate in providing professional sexual knowledge to students. As experts, they deliver facts based on correct terms and scientific evidence to students. They also initiate conversations about sex and ask students questions to help students continue interactive talk independently.
The design manager acts as a bridge between all these parties. They adapt design methodology to identify what kind of subjects should be covered based on students‘ needs and work with Sex Education experts to devise the best sex education curriculum for students and implement it.

Authors: Eun-Jeong Dan, Yash Chauhan, Alisha-Lou Nader, Isidora Ceculovic

Have you ever been ashamed of going to the pharmacy to get something concerning your sexual health? Because we all have been in the same situation. We especially experience this shame at a young age, when even buying tampons is embarrassing for us. Looking back at the journey of becoming a woman, there is a lot that is missing in proper comprehensive sexual education in schools. 

What is the problem? 

What is sexual education, and why is it essential to the growth and development of girls? A high quality, age and developmentally appropriate sexual education provide girls with the knowledge, skills, and motivation they need to make informed decisions about their sex and sexuality. It is especially important in the puberty years when girls are learning about the changes that their bodies are undergoing.

However, why is it still an entrenched problem that girls around the world are still not getting the proper comprehensive sexual education that they need? The lack of it leads to girls turning to peers, social media, and sexually explicit content on the internet that might not be of a reliable source. After talking to several women and their experiences they faced in school sex ed, we identified that girls between the age of 12-18 are in their most vulnerable years. One might be too embarrassed to ask a parent or teacher about what to do when a yeast infection occurs, or how to take care of their sexual health and body. Instead, most sexual education places emphasis on either “abstinence-only” or “how to use a condom”. This leads to girls missing out on important areas of information such as “human development” which includes reproduction, sexual orientation, gender identity and how to deal with common infections, STDs and unplanned pregnancy. 

We’ve concluded that schools should be a safe place where girls are able to obtain information about their sexual health. Empowering girls to make informed decisions about relationships and sexuality, and navigating a world where gender-based violence, gender inequality, early and unintended pregnancies, HIV, and other sexually transmitted infections (STIs) continue to pose serious threats to their health and well-being.

Project proposal

As mentioned above, girls and young women lack the needed education or feel embarrassed to talk to the right people. In Switzerland, we have health insurance which covers some costs of the gynecologist; however, contraceptives are not included. Furthermore, for each consulting and infection, we need to physically go to the gynecologist – who has the time and money to do that for minor questions or problems? It seems absurd to expect women to have to go through such a process in order to maintain their sexual health. 

Through desk research, we found a company called “ease-healthcare” based in Singapore. For more information, you can visit their home page here (https://www.ease-healthcare.com/ ). What inspired us, and we found beneficial to women – with regard to the embarrassment and judgment factor which society puts on us – is that the company offers online services such as seeing a doctor and receiving medication by postage; contraception delivery including emergency contraceptives; home-tests for HIV and STDs; and teleconsulting. Furthermore, all deliveries are sent in simple packaging to support their judgment-free beliefs. 

This led us to our project idea of creating a platform that offers girls and young women the education, access, and consultation which is missing in Switzerland for our target group. Through sharing videos on our platform or social media and by getting the right people involved in our project, we are dedicated to making a change in girls‘ and young women’s lives. The content of the videos revolves around professionals and guests talking about common problems, relatable insecurities of women, and general valuable knowledge. This aims to make young girls aware that they are not alone, that there are people they can reach out to, and in general learn more about the female body and cycle. 

By including schools, health insurances, doctors and/or specialists we can build a strong and reliable platform of knowledge. Through the school system’s sex education program and campaigns, we hope to bring awareness to our target group. Moreover, after a careful registration process, girls can get consultations from professionals and the needed treatment without any embarrassment or parental guidance.

User Journey

To complement our project concept, we designed a user journey for a young girl.

Authors: Grace Wu, Georgina Mrose, Idoia Paucar Herrera, Alexandra Infanger

Our group decided to tackle the difficult topic of sexual harassment. Many find this an uncomfortable subject to discuss, and due to this unease, women don’t speak up, which leads to numerous hidden cases and untold stories. It is disheartening to say that there were 626 rape convictions in Switzerland in 2018, and this is a number for the victims that had to fight fr their lives. Unfortunately, under the Swiss law, “(in order) for rape to have taken place, there must have been coercion, which means women are indirectly required to have defended themselves.” Therefore, when we analyze these numbers, they are not accurate, as there are many rape cases where women suffering the attack go under a paralysis-like-state.
Consequently, due to how the law is currently set up, those cases are not accounted for. Additionally, it has been proven that on many occasions, women feel ashamed to speak up. For example, based on a survey conducted on 4500 swiss women, 64% felt embarrassed to go to the police, and 62% said it was not worth it. These are scary statistics that sadly are a part of most women’s lives. For that reason, we believe that there should be a big focus on educating individuals on this topic, men, women, boys, girls, parents, teachers, etc. It is only by educating people that we can expect behaviour to change.

The Challenges

A typical Swiss mindset emphasizes security and stability. Although these are great traits for education, the Swiss tend to be more traditional, cautious, and guarded when it comes to such a delicate topic. This is also reflected in their children’s upbringing and view on school education. In Switzerland, sexuality education commences mainly around secondary school, although there are differences between the cantons. Sex education seems to be a very delicate topic because it includes emotions, morals, society and religion. The more conservatives are worried that introducing sex education at a young age dangers innocent minds. Furthermore, parents seem to want to take responsibility for explaining this topic to their children, yet it is questionable if and how well this is done.

In an interview between Beat Zemp, the head of the Federation of Swiss Teachers, and swissinfo.ch on January 29, 2018, Beat talks about the difficulties of implementing sex education in Swiss schools. When asked if he thinks that parents should educate their children and not the school, he replied: The main aim is to protect children from sexual abuse. In Kindergarten, children should already be aware that ‘my body belongs to me’ and that ‘there is good and bad touching.’ By Upper School, you can add in protection from sexually transmitted diseases. These two risks justify why schools should be allowed to interfere in how parents teach their children about sex. This opinion has been protected by the Swiss Federal Court ruling and now by the European Convention on Human Rights.

Therefore the challenge is to change the typical Swiss mindset about a topic that seems to gain importance and interest within the younger generation. On the one hand, to end the taboo on this topic and on another, to pass on learnings and understandings that last a lifetime.

The Idea

Based on research material, the main issue when it comes to sexual harassment in education. There is a lack of education from a young age about the meaning of sexuality, consent, and respect for one’s body. As mentioned before, this is an issue some parents believe should be addressed at home, as they don’t want to over-sexualize or even stimulate their kids in that manner. On many occasions, the issue with this is that such conversations never happen, and kids grow up without the necessary knowledge about sexuality and what are appropriate behaviours. For that reason, we believe that education should come from a school environment and that this should be explained to children without the biased opinions of their parents. Kids should be entitled to understand how their bodies work and learn to respect it from a young age. By doing so, they can learn how to react in a time when a reaction needs to take place, for example, in case of inappropriate behaviour or anything else in this manner – once addressed, it can be dealt with in an educated manner. We recommend doing so by applying mandatory sexual education workshops or lectures at three crucial developmental “stages” of an individual’s life. The “first stage” being at primary school, the “second stage” at high-school, and the “third stage” at university. Each stage would address the individual needs of each respective age bracket. As shown below:

With that said, we believe that by implementing this topic-specific educational tool in young people’s lives, at these three different yet equally important stages, there is much potential to shift the mentality and phobia people have on this topic. Additionally, educating young people from a young age gives them the power to understand their bodies and their counterparts, but it also allows them to learn to respect them. This social design effort can change how people approach and demystify a topic that is uncomfortable to most individuals of all ages.

Written by Lea Hollenstein, Zirzareth Molina, Marina Praxedes, and Kaho Sakuta.

Last week we had an opportunity to have a conversation with Andrej Balaz, a designer from Miro. We learned that Miro has constantly focused on usability, adapting user’s experience. And these efforts lead Miro to be one of the best-known visual collaboration tools. Especially as the pandemic situation continues, it has gained many users; Now, miro has replaced the whiteboard in the real meeting room.
Personally, I had used this online whiteboard tools about 7years ago, back in high school, when Miro was called ‚Google real-time board.‘ My high school teacher tried to use this tool to collaborate with classmates and make a better class experience. Unfortunately, her efforts came to naught because, at that time, the function was not so intuitive that it took time for all of us to get used to this system. Also, the server was not stable that it usually made a problem when many users were connected at the same time. We all complained that there’s no point in using Google real-time board when we have enough whiteboards in the classroom. And 5 years after that, I was introduced to this new Miro service when I worked on UX developing projects for the dating app. I really liked the service through the project. It was intuitive enough to use it without any learning process and clearly shows the connection between users and the process’s chronological order. Everything was there when I needed it.
With that being said, I think we can associate the social design concept with Miro as the service itself is delicately designed to meet the user’s need. It reduces wastes of time, energy and space.
Also, if we consider that design shapes our lives today, we can expect that miro creates a foundation where designers and other stakeholders can collaborate to make a better future. Miro is not specifically for social design, but the possibilities for this service are striking.

Written by Eun-Jeong Dan

There has been a drastic shift in the working environment and collaboration for most when the pandemic started. This pushed online collaboration platforms to perform better and think of ways to improve for users. One such collaboration platform that has paved the way for collaboration is Miro, now with over 15 Million users, they have clearly shown better ways of collaboration during these times.

When the first lockdown happened there have been worries about working off-site to brainstorm, collaborate, visualize maps, and also get feedback. We used to believe especially when it comes to creativity in work happens when people meet, this has smoothly transitioned now to an online basis thanks to Miro.

As a design management student, we use mapping and visualizing during classes and projects quite often, which meant during lockdown we were desperately trying to find ways to keep the same working style online and researching tools to help. This was also the case for any designers, teams, etc. This is when the social design comes to play, realizing there is a social need and finding ways to the working ways easier for the people. Designing tools to collaborate, providing a template for easy layouts, post-it notes concept, multiple users on a page are some of the applications Miro provides.

Having Miro as a big part of our work now, we got the opportunity to participate in an online talk with Andrej Balaz, a designer at Miro, to understand the social design aspect in a collaboration platform and how they always strive to change and adapt according to their user’s needs. They want to make themselves so useful, their users will find it hard to collaborate without Miro. This shows how implanting social design helps a software company to strive, this will not end when the pandemic does. Post pandemic working environment would more or the less have the same working style, we have adapted and evolved new ways and this time is the use of more online tools. The reason is the feasibility of such a platform, the ability to check the works and brainstorm anywhere, on the go or at home than being just restricted to the classroom or workplace.

By Ann Maria Mathew

By Anya Low

In this blog we take a look into work-styles which are applicable and used in the Covid situation, where the physical work environment has been replaced by virtual working spaces. Adapting to a new working culture can be challenging, especially be sudden enforcement of the government during the COVID pandemic. This is where design comes into play, by looking into new ways on how people can adapt to new ways of living and working with a very different approach in home-office. There are many challenges, which people are confronted with while doing home office, such as less utilities to fulfil certain work-tasks, less of a work environment where one can focus which may include noise disturbance, a too cozy setting etc., disrupted communication flow, when comparing to a shared office space, where meetings can occur and direct contact is present. This is where Miro, a platform used for visual collaboration, comes to play. Miro allows actors to collaborate virtually by clustering, writing categorising on a digital whiteboard that can be accessed through an device with a screen and internet connection. Miro is now widely used from big companies, to smaller groups of people and since the platform allows free service, to a certain extent, it can also be used by students and other stakeholders, who work on a budget. Within the current conditions, its  use is considered to be an affective alternative to visually collaborate. Miro is a useful tool, which can be utilised in universities amongst students, who conduct virtual team work, but also for teachers and workshops and a tool to teach and involve students in participatory design. Although Miro is accessible for all who have the necessary devices and internet, and it is a great alternative, it’s use is not enough to satisfy all possible stakeholders. In many cases, it may not be user friendly to elderly groups, nor may it be user friendly for all devices. There is a lot to improve in terms of usability and accessibility, since the whole world is not using Miro yet. The next steps for Miro, and the next challenge for all virtual collaboration platforms, should be to integrate more people into it’s usability and make it more accessible for all potential users around each geographical area.