ISSUE N° 1
23 NOV 2016
DESIGN METHODS TEAM WORK
SCENARIOS FOR SOCIAL MEDIA AND AWARENESS ONE
UNDER MY THUMB
TWO
RULE THE ROOST
THREE
THE APPLE OF MY EYE
FOUR
THE WORLD IS OUR OYSTER
GRITCHI
social media
awareness
BE (A)WARE The evolution of the propagation of awareness has changed in the past years and will continue changing in the future. Since the beginning of the 20th century the sense of awareness stemmed from common sense or from mass media. Mass media spread the information only by using official channels and giving local and structured information. With the arrival of the internet the information became global and branched. The internet allowed people to reach, choose and select all the information wanted. Moreover users may actively deepen their research as much as they wish to be the authors of their own contents. Users are more and more engaged by creating interaction. Indeed it has become common to ask people to be more active in a community or on the web (e.g. giving feedbacks or giving their opinion). People constantly receive different stimuli from both the authorities and common people to improve involvement in different fields, from social to environmental awareness. However we are left with a great question: how will these stimuli affect our future? - GRITCHI
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GRITCHI
contents
The society has come to the point where dramatic conditions are requiring the intervention from institutions that take up the task of creating awareness on great issues, such as environmental and social problems. The institutions use their visibility and social media to reach the majority of people and to promote a better and sensible society.
The collectiveness of the individuals is controlled and influenced through social media by the institutions, such as governments, churches and big companies. The institutions are the guide for individuals, who are passively accepting the conditions given. The aim of the institutions is to make people aware of their own personal issues and act by controlling each persons’ life for “his/her own good�.
Each person is focused on his/ her own personal life or the life of his/her close group of friends and family. The social media are not seen as a global tool for connectivity, but as a tool to keep the loved-ones closer and forever connected. The use of social media is purely for personal purposes and interests.
In a world of worldwide connectivity also big fishes can become the promoters of a great change in the society. The social media allows the common people to interact and be more engaged. Thus spreading a general sense of community throughout the world in order to organise a better society that acts for a common good.
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GRITCHI
social media
awareness
Institutions guiding individuals.
CITTADINI CREATIVI
LET’S MOVE
Cittadini Creativi originates within the Ph.D. research of Daniela Selloni at Politecnico di Milano, it is an existing project focused on carrying out research outside universities, bringing them in the society, in a direct contact with the city and its residents.
The campaign was announced on February 9, 2010 by Michelle Obama. She indicated the campaign would encourage healthier food in schools, better food labeling and more physical activity for children. Let’s Move campaign has been a success due to the use social media by providing helping nutrition information for parents to make better food choices for their children. The active presence on social media is the key to spread awareness about making healthier food choices.
It applied to the call for the assignment of temporary spaces in Cascina Cuccagna, presenting a program shaped on participatory design between designers and local inhabitant, by using the tools of service design research.
- Denise Lucente
This kind of approach strives for rouse the creative skills of each citizen in order to get a huge sense of awareness about various and different topics in order to let them turn into designer of their daily life. Thanks to Institutions, Universities and big companies as Slow Food Italy, participants have got the possibilitity to take part of an exciting process that allows them to have access to fresh food and quality, to organize their neighborhood objects’ library, to know the new needs of every day life and of course letting them realize it by themselves.
www.ihealthcomms.wordpress.com www.letsmove.gov
- Leandro Sgro www.cittadinicreativi.it
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GRITCHI
under my thumb
BOXIES FOR FOODIES
WebMD WebMD is one of the social media tools as RSS feeds to social networking sites used to create an online community that drives the creation of cancer awareness in many different ways and for multiple purposes. In healthcare, information dissemination is a key mechanism of creating awareness, a crucial factor in the early detection and prevention of diseases. To understand the role that social media can play in cancer awareness. WebWD has enabled communication between individuals and has the potential to enable collaboration between individuals and healthcare organizations. Overall, there is a growing pull amongst physicians to utilize social media as a means of ensuring the proper dissemination of information to their patients in order to counteract scientifically questionable publications and educational videos. Indeed, such tools have garnered attention for their use as a means for individuals to collaborate outside the boundaries of traditional institutions. - Xu Ran www.webmd.com
Avocado is a new online food delivery service straight to your door, in Luxembourg, that wants to spread a healthier and happier lifestyle in the customer’s routine. It offers various boxes with local organic ingredients and seasonal food for different nutritional needs. All the customer needs to do is to choose the recipe he wishes to cook, to assemble the ingredients from the box and to follow the easy instructions of the recipe. Avocado wants to make people more conscious and aware about healthy and local food. - Denise Lucente
THE NUTRITION SOCIETY The Nutrition Society was established in 1941 to advance the scientific study of nutrition and its application to the maintenance of human and animal health. The Society is the largest learned society for nutrition in Europe. It helps people to get a better understanding of how to lead a healthy life. From their blog and website, one can get the latest information of their researches in a variety of aspects of people’s daily life, especially in nutrition. Thus you will get very scientific explanation of the side effects of the things you may ignore before. They also provide the readers with their advice of food, sports and sleep, etc. Besides, they held online conferences and workshops with different themes to draw people’s attention to their physical and psychological health. - Hanyu Tang www.nutritionsociety.org
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www.avocado.lu
GRITCHI
awareness
social media
Institutions use their visibility and social media to reach the majority of people and to promote a better and sensible society.
EARTH HOUR Earth Hour is a worldwide grassroots movement uniting people to protect the planet. By registering for Earth Hour, individuals, communities and businesses are making a commitment to turn their lights off for an hour in acknowledgement of an act they will undertake for the benefit of the planet. By switching off the lights for one hour, people can make a substantial difference in the energy consumption and can help reduce effect of global warming on this planet. Engaging a massive mainstream community on a broad range of environmental issuees, Earth Hour has grown to become a global message that citizens across the world must work together to fight climate change. It aims to encourage an interconnected global community to share the opportunities and challenges of creating a sustainable world.
Earth Hour embraces technology to spread the message of positive environmental action across the world. In order to increate its outreach and to raise awareness, Earth Hour has adapted to different platforms’ characteristics. The team has created its first digital strategy to campaign for its cause and to bring supporters together through social media. Seven thousand cities in 162 countries across the globe turn their lights off for Earth Hour every year. It is an excellent opportunity for millions of people across the world to take one simple step to show they’re serious about backing action on climate change.
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aiming to encourage an interconnected global community
- Marina Psimikaki www.earthhour.org
OVERLAY FLAGS ON PROFILE Facebook is trying to create a collective consciousness by giving to people tools to celebrate or to express emotions, support or condolences to the world. After the attacks in France everyone around the world could show their support by adding a French flag filter to their profile photos, and the same thing happened not too long ago in support of marriage equality. Nowadays in a time when the world is hurting, every bit of support helps. If someone asked you to participate in something that is meant to ease the pain and worry of a crisis, you would say yes.
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Facebook activated its “safety check” feature in Paris — a tool that lets users in disaster areas notify their friends that they’re safe — but did not in the Lebanese capital so some people argue that these sort of activities are shallow ways to show support. But on the other side, there’s something to be said for the psychological effect of seeing a sea of support for a given cause. Because also the decision to abstain from giving support could lead people to reconsider their opinions as they find themselves being the only one of their friends that seems to feel differently on a given topic. - Denise Lucente www.wired.com
GRITCHI
under my thumb
SOCIAL MEDIA AT EPA
TAKE IT TALLER
DRINK GOOD DO GOOD
EPA (United States Environmental Protection Agency) is an agency of the U.S. federal government which was created for the purpose of protecting human health and the environment by writing and enforcing regulations based on laws passed by Congress. EPA is working closely with first responders and coordinating with local and state officials to ensure the safety of people impacted by water contaminated as a result of the spill. EPA uses social media technologies and tools to share information for everyone to gain a better understanding of environmental conditions and solutions. They make every effort to observe requirements related to federal activities, such as transparency, public process, or privacy. EPA doesn’t endorse any particular social media site or technique.
BRITISH COLUMBIA, CANADA- In 2006 The Nature Conservancy, at the invitation of a broad group of great partners, led and completed a successful fundraising campaign to save at least 5 million acres of the Great Bear Rainforest from environmentally irresponsible logging. The public campaign is widely known in Canada thanks to the use of Twitter, Facebook, Vimeo and several blogs. Its aim was to call people to ask the provincial government to take action in protecting British Columbia’s part of the largest remaining coastal temperate rainforest on Earth and its animals. Furthermore the intent was to persuade consumers in Europe and the United states to stop buying B.C. forest products from the region. Nowadays Save the Great Bear Rainforest has launched another campaign called Take it Taller that is aiming at including a greater amount of people in protecting more than just 50% of the forest.
For over 23 million Americans food deserts pose a serious threat: they don’t have access to healthy fruits and vegetables, which can lead to serious health problems. The company Naked Juice and Wholesome Wave, a non-profit organization, dedicated to improving access and affordability of fresh local produce. The challenge went beyond just donating produce “we needed to raise awareness of the threat, and prompt action”. They partnered with one of the biggest social games on Facebook, Farmville, to raise awareness of food deserts and enroll a community of virtual farmers to help. This virtual food drive mirrored a national promotion Naked ran in the real-world, in which they donated 150,000lbs worth of produce to underserved communities.
- Hanyu Tang www2.epa.gov
- Erika Galligani
www.drinkgooddogood.com www.industry.com
- Cristina Pham www.forestethics.org www.savethegreatbear.org
DOODLE OF GOOGLE Google as the multinational, publiclytraded organization built around the company’s hugely popular search engine has launched for the first time in 1998 a special, temporary alteration of the logo on its homepage, named “Doodle”. As more and more people add Google search bars to their browsers, the ever-inventive Google Doodles give them a continuing reason to visit the homepage contributing social awareness by celebrating holidays, events, achievements and people.
As more and more people add Google search bars to their browsers, the everinventive Google Doodles give them a continuing reason to visit the homepage contributing social awareness by celebrating holidays, events, achievements and people. his gorgeous illustration for Martin Luther King Jr. Day perfectly captures Tthe freedom he fought for.
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Showcasing doves - the birds of peace and love - through an open window is a subtle and beautiful way to celebrate one of the biggest figures in history. - Leandro Sgro hwww.creativebloq.com www.wikipedia.org
GRITCHI
social media
awareness
The use of social media is purely for personal purposes and interests.
COMPANION APP “Text me when you get home” is a frequent farewell among friends and family. Companion acts as a virtual bodyguard, connecting the user’s family and friends and have them keep an eye on them as they walk alone at night. The app uses the phone’s build-it sensors to detect changes in movement. If the user starts running or the headphones come out, the app asks user to confirm that they’re OK. If they don’t respond within 15 seconds, the app alerts the user’s companion who has the option to call the police.
Late night walks will never be the same again.
The app has the ability to make entire neighborhoods safer. The app collects data on areas and paths where users “feel nervous”, providing a potential goldmine of information that neighborhoods and cities could analyze to make streets safer. Companion’s goal is to provide helpful data that can be used for local law enforcement fo focus on areas that need more police attention. - Marina Psimikaki www.companionapp.io
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GRITCHI
the apple of my eye
WE MEDIA NOTICE OF PEOPLE MISSING After a people is missing, parents are no longer anxious, or launch a limited number of relatives and friends to find together. But there are tens of thousands of volunteers to help, you pay attention to the child’s movements. Mobile communication is now so developed, people just need to find clues and take a picture or some small videos of missing person, upload them, families of missing persons can get the information immediately. Platform will be based on the user’s actual location, gathering relevant information. Within three hours, information of missing person will rapidly cover nationwide. All volunteers could continuously update information within coverage, until the missing people are get in contact again. - Xu Ran www.cnbeta.com/articles/450253.htm
BROADCAST EATING The latest fad in South Korea, ‘broadcast eating’, is followed by a great amount of fans. Park Seo-yeon, known as “The Diva,” broadcasts herself eating in her apartment for up to three hours every day.Viewers can chat with her, or send virtual balloons, that translate into cash. There are about 3,500 people in South Korea doing such online programmes, some sponsored by restaurants. Some say it makes eating alone feel less awkward. In South Korea, one-person households could comprise one-third of the population in 15 years, the fastest rate among developed countries. “It feels as if I am eating that much food with her. I think that’s what the show is about. And probably, it’s comforting for people who eat alone.”
Two things are driving the trend, she says: an obsession with food, eating and dieting, and the loneliness of urban life. The Diva’s meals are mostly multi-course, multi-hour affairs featuring abnormally large portions. That’s part of the appeal. A lot of her fans are young people, particularly young women, who face tremendous pressure to stay thin. “A lot of my fans are on a diet,” she says. “Watching me eat gives them a vicarious thrill.” When asked if she has any time for a private life, considering she broadcasts more than six hours a day every day including weekends, the answer is that she doesn’t need one. “This is a lot more fun,” she says. - Xu Ran http://edition.cnn.com/2014/01/29/world/ asia/korea-eating-room/
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GRITCHI
awareness
social media
’Big fishes’ can become the promoters of a great change in society.
FOOD SHARING GERMANY - Valentin Thurn, a Colognebased filmmaker, together with several friends decided to turn to the “sharing economy” approach to create a foodsaving venture, through a website called Foodsharing.de. The aim of the website is to create awareness and fight against the incredible amount of waste (90 million tons), preventing large amounts of produce, bread and other perishable food from being thrown away. The non-profit website involved 240 cities across Germany, supermarkets, bakers and more than 41,000 people. The website allows to connect people who have free food to give away with people seeking those items. What can be shared are the food items with “best before” labels. The site has no inspectors checking on the food offered through the network. Thus the consumers are their own inspectors, as they are given the responsibility to rate the food as well as checking the food before eating it. Moreover each user has to follow the only rule to upload food they would eat as well. The way the website works is simple: people have to sign up as members and either list a basket with approved fooditems they have available for pick up or find a basket in which they can find food they are looking for.
Furthermore, for anyone about to cook and find they are short on an ingredient or are looking for people to share any excess, there’s a third, “food-sharing,” option. The service is completely free and the money needed to run the website comes from advertising and from grants or donations. The reasons behind such success are the decrease of food waste and the connected decrease of costs, as well as the growing sense of community. - Cristina Pham www.foodsharing.de
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the world is our oyster
GRITCHI
CRITICAL MASS Critical Mass is a cycling event originated in 1992 in San Francisco; by the end of 2003, the event was being held in over 300 cities around the world. Critical Mass is sometimes called an “organized coincidence”, with no leadership or membership, its purpose is not usually formalized beyond the direct action of meeting at a set location and time and traveling as a group through city or town streets on bikes. This is one of the most common example of social awareness generated by small communities involving mass of different people generally bond with same interest, even a perfect way to socialize, meet new friends, have fun...but mostly ride! - Leandro Sgro www.becomeahero.it www.wikipedia.org www.becomeahero.it/wordpress/critical-mass
THE AFRICA THEY NEVER SHOW YOU In 2015, the kenyan writer Binyavanga Wainaina published in the journal Granta a kind of satirical poster titled “How to write about Africa”, where he dispensed advice ironic to continue to offer a twist image of the continent. One of these recommendations concerned the use of the images: “Don’t put in the cover the photo of an african welldressed and healthy, except if that african didn’t win a Nobel Prize” . Nowadays, through social networks, Africans fight against this image of their continent full of stereotypes and prejudices. The purpose is to try to describe “another Africa”, not only to the West, but also to themselves in order to create awareness around this issue often filtered by media.
On the platform Tumblr, the blog Africa they never show you, born in July 2010, is a collection of pictures and articles that aim to show the Africa that “they” don’t show us. They, in this case, are mainly NGOs and humanitarian organizations, accused of “pornography of poverty” and exploitation of the image of Africa in order to nourish the economic model. That model was criticized by economist Dambisa Moyo, author of the book The charity that kills, of which the blog is hosted a quote: “I wish we questioned the aid model as much as we are questioning the capitalism model. Sometimes the most generous thing you can do is just say no”. - Erika Galligani www.theafricatheynevershowyou.tumblr.com
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GRITCHI
awareness
social media
SEECLICKFIX Gonvernment by the People. SeeClickFix is an online mapping tool that helps citizens take direct action to fix problems in their community. Users can report non-emergency issues, communicate with public officials, and engage with fellow citizens to help find solutions to problems in their neighborhood or town. In a world where too many people ignore too many problems or feel powerless to address them, it is important to have concrete tools to turn complaints into action. SeeClickFix allows citizens to act to make their neighborhoods better and governments to respond in an efficient and accountable manner. Public engagement initiatives such as SeeClickFix empowers citizens, brings together new ideas, and increases community collaboration.
KONY 2012 In 2012 a small San Diego non profit called Invisible Children created a video campaign as an experiment to create awareness and shed light on Joseph Kony, the central African warlord who recruited child soldier for the LRA by kidnapping and brainwashing them. Moreover Kony and his forces are guilty of leaving abductions and mass murder in their wake for over 20 years. The half-an-hour video, called KONY 2012, gained an almost instant viral success by collecting in only two days more than 43 million views on Youtube (not to mention the incredible number of views on Vimeo). However the almost unknown topic the video obtained a great visibility, also dominating Twitter worldwide with the hashtag #Stopkony, and letting millions of people know what was happening in Uganda and its children. Invisible Children’s campaign was created by the intern Jason Russell, whose sole propose was to bring Kony to justice and call for international action to stop the Ugandan war criminal. However the organisation was not ready for the national and global media attention, receiving criticism and bad reviews about the management of the funds received from several donations worldwide and the oversimplified portray of the situation in Africa and Uganda.
- Marina Psimikaki www.seeclickfix.com
- Cristina Pham www.invisiblechildren.com/kony-2012/
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the world is our oyster
GRITCHI
ROOKIE STYLE: GIRL POWER “Style Rookie” Tavi Genvinson – the coolest, quirkiest, little fashionista-feminist to ever pen a blog. Rookie is an online magazine and book series for teenagers. Each month, a different editorial theme drives the writing, photography, and artwork that they publish. Gevinson started a fashion blog, Style Rookie, in 2008 The blog, featuring photos of the eleven-year-old in distinctive outfits and her commentary on the latest fashion trends, began drawing nearly 30,000 readers each day. Not only does she do her own writing for The Style Rookie (fashion blog) but she also does a feminist piece for her newer blog Rookie. On top of that she has people write about her and is interviewed by them. Her is a magazine extract in which the famous teenage blogging prodigy sits in the Rodarte for Target leopard dress.
#SAVERUMMO
“The water has never softened us.” Last month the italian pasta factory Rummo of Benevento was hit by a violent flood . The web has quickly mobilized for the cause: Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and so on were crowded with a lot of photos of packages of pasta showing the name of the brand. The company has denied rumors that the campaign had come from them; the popular engagement started from the bottom and the authors are still unknown. The reason why help Rummo is explained on the Facebook page: “In order to defend our productions, to valorize them in so hard times, to protect our South.”. In other words to make people aware of small italian reality and sustain them in a difficult moment. - Erika Galligani www.facebook.com/ events/858013070963026/ www.instagram.com/p/9QisAsI_ ga/?tagged=rummo
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Fifteen-year-old Tavi Gevinson had a hard time finding strong female, teenage role models — so she built a space where they could find each other. At TEDxTeen, she illustrates how the conversations on sites like Rookie, her wildly popular web magazine for and by teen girls, are putting a new, unapologetically uncertain and richly complex face on modern feminism. So she thinks the question of what makes a strong female character often goes misinterpreted, and instead we get these two-dimensional superwomen who maybe have one quality that’s played up a lot. She hopes her blog can help represent girls in a way that shows those different dimensions. - Hanyu Tang www.thestylerookie.com
LEANDRO SGRO
CRISTINA PHAM
MARINA PSIMIKAKI
DENISE LUCENTE
XU RAN
HANYU TANG
ERIKA GALLIGANI