SWEET EXCHANGE
PROBLEM
Cross-cultural communications remain distant in diverse urban communities.
ONE-WEEK SOLUTION
Sweet Express is a "culture cafe" where strangers purchase a dessert representative of their own personal heritage to share with a stranger in another location of the city (via video technology). In return, they receive a dessert from that stranger's culture, effectively creating a cultural exchange between both parties and sweetening the incentive for diverse people to break bread with one another.
FINAL TAKE-AWAYS
Key moments gathered during our research in response to our "culture cafe" design proposal.
CO-DESIGNING WITH THE COMMUNITY
Encouraging non-designers to come up with solutions that encourage cross-cultural sharing between diverse members of a community.
INITIAL RESEARCH
Understanding what culture means to members of the Pittsburgh community.
Why Culture Matters In A Sustainable Future
In the future, an influx of diverse people will be moving to the USA in search of new opportunities. As a result, America's social landscape will continue to evolve with people who originate from hundreds of different cultures. History proves that an ecosystem with diverse groups of people must be able to effectively communicate with one another in order to avoid conflict (as was confirmed in our first video interview, 'Cultural Sustainability 1', featured above).
This investigation focused on how people interact with others of different backgrounds. Understanding our subjects’ willingness to share and learn from other cultures (or lack thereof) provided insights on where design could be used to bridge or reinforce cross-cultural relations. We should care about this because it is socially unsustainable for individual entities to thrive in the same space without identifying common ground upon which to stand together.
Social conflict breeds ecological, economical, political, and environmental distress, which is unsustainable to any culture. Ergo, the successful coexistence of multiple cultures in one space is soundly relevant to the ideals of sustainability as a whole. Improving multi-cultural communications in an urban environment will trickle out to surrounding ecosystems, thus making it easier for individual entities to spread the wealth instead of simply acquiring it. For example, the Conflict Kitchen uses the metaphor of ‘breaking bread’ to facilitate meaningful conversations between opposing parties on instances of social and cultural conflict between America and other countries. The questions that we posed to Pittsburgh residents have opened up a door to community sharing that could potentially improve international relations in a significant way.