Heart-Tube-Heart: Designing a “Connector” for Storytelling
How often do we find ourselves talking to complete strangers? Not to ask for directions, but just to get a glimpse into someone else’s world?
The short answer is: not often. It isn’t done because it isn’t the cultural norm, and is outside of people’s usual comfort zones.
Our team consisting of Xin Wen (DEA ‘20), Mikail Masqood (Arch ‘21), Sheri Guo (InfoSci ‘22), Joseph Yoon (ChemE ‘23), Connie Liu (InfoSci ‘23), and Benji Magin (Arch ’21) decided to tackle this problem- how would we make spontaneous interaction more comfortable and allow people to connect with one another?
The Problem: Invisible Social Barriers
Within the broad topic of “diversity and inclusion”, our team chose to focus on the topic of connection building. University students often want to broaden their perspectives through meeting and interacting with others who might not be the same as them.
However, connections often cannot be formed due to unspoken, invisible social barriers. These barriers can come in all forms, such as social anxiety, uncertainty about intentions, assumptions based on appearance, worries about perception, etc. We wanted to provide an experience to dissolve the invisible barriers and allow people to be able to connect with each other without being held back by preconceptions or social anxiety.
Initial Research
Our team conducted both in-person interviews and literature reviews to dive deeper into how people build connections with one another. We also examined case studies of personal experiences that allow people to connect and bond.
We found that:
People tend to bond over commonalities, such as shared interests and experiences.
People can bond over catalysts, or “forced” or obligated experience, such as being assigned to do the same task in a group.
A sense of urgency could be detrimental to forming new relationships. If people are in a rush, they may not feel as inclined to connect.
Pre-formed social networks, such as pre-existing cliques or friend groups, can be detrimental to forming new relationships.
Based on these findings, we wanted to create a catalyst, or an experiential installation, in this case, to facilitate interaction between people without rushing them.
Early Iterations
Iteration 1: Thin Screens
In our first iteration, Thin Screens, we wanted to use projectors on two screens on respective sides of a semi-enclosed booth to create a focused experience between two people. The projector would project questions for a user to answer as well as the other user’s answers in real-time. After the users are done with answering the series of questions, they have the option to choose to lift the screens in the middle and see each other.
We received feedback from a panel of professors who commented on potential problems with this design. The design highly emphasized the importance of the identity (face and physical appearance) as the final objective. Instead of encouraging a conversational flow, the booth setting resembles more of a “confessional” style of communication, which may induce stress and deter participants from being honest and comfortable with the experience. It can also be hard to leave the situation without making the other participant confused or bothered.
Iteration 2: Resonance
We wanted to keep the physical interactivity aspect and the initial anonymity of our last prototype, but without the potential trapped feeling of a booth setting. Inspired by playground pipes, Resonance is designed to be a tubular installation for Medium’s RAW Expo event in Milstein, through which people can talk to other people directly through the pipes, with partitions that provide some anonymity. For this design, we received feedback from Professor Denise Ramzy during our mid-semester review. One thing that she pointed out was that there’s no activation point or prompt when two people arrive at the tube, which can lead to awkward moments of uncertainty. It is also hard to know when someone else is on the other end of the tube without some type of indicator. Finally, it is also unclear when an interaction is considered over.
Final Design: Heart-Tube-Heart
For our final design, we took all previous feedback into consideration and created Heart-Tube-Heart.
Similar to Resonance, Heart-Tube-Heart is an installation intended to be located on the Milstein Hall walkway at Cornell University for Medium RAW Expo. The installation consists of multiple sets of height-adjustable PVC pipes that loops over the walkway, which eliminates the closed-off setting of a booth. Each end of the pipes consists of a mouthpiece and earpiece that allows users to listen and talk without having to move their head back and forth from one pipe opening.
On each end of the pipe, there is an additional panel with 5 buttons, with each button corresponding to a prompt displayed on a sign attached. The sign also notes that the conversation is finished after answering one prompt unless the user wishes to answer more. This addresses how the interaction should start and end, eliminating awkward moments of uncertainty. People can interact with each other through the pipe without being able to directly see each other, removing any social or visual preconceptions.
The pipes are also intended for one-on-one interactions, to remove the sense of pre-formed social networks. People are able to press buttons that correspond to various questions that serve as conversation starters, facilitating storytelling and helping people to quickly build deeper connections with others.
Steps for Using Heart-Tube-Heart:
Choose a specific topic from the sign that is most interesting to you and press the corresponding button.
Button begins to blink on the other end. A curious person on the other end presses it.
Share your experiences as prompted and listen to their response.
Bid the other person farewell when the conversation is finished and leave with a better understanding of another person you might not have talked to otherwise.
Story-Telling Prompts
Prompting storytelling with specific prompts helps people to share their perspective and bond over this Heart-Tube-Heart experience. These prompts include:
What is the hardest thing you have experienced at Cornell?
For what in life do you feel most grateful for?
What is your take on modern love?
What similarities do you share with your parental figure(s)?
What quirks did you have as a child?
We chose these five questions because they immediately go beyond the typical “what’s your major” or “what dorm do you live in” questions that college students typically ask when they first meet. These questions are intended to show deeper insights about a person, providing a basis for more interesting and memorable conversations.
Branding
Our design is inspired by playground sound pipes, which is a common feature found on children playgrounds. To echo this inspiration, we wanted our brand to have a personable and relatable name. “Heart-to-heart” was something that came to our minds during our brainstorm session. Through our design, we want to help people to skip over the ordinary, surface-level questions and immediately have candid and genuine conversations. Heart-to-heart perfectly describes our intent. To make it a bit more unique, we decided to make the “to” into “tube”, to echo the main component of our design.
Future Direction
Heart-Tube-Heart could be an experience that can go beyond the university setting, such as in a museum as a travel destination. The mechanism of Heart-Tube-Heart is simple, but the prompts can be easily changed for the appropriate audience, providing an interesting way not just for university students to connect, but people all over the world. With Heart-Tube-Heart, we dream of a world where it’s no longer intimidating to approach others, or fear judgment and stereotyping based on appearances. We hope that the Heart-Tube-Heart will inspire people to reach out to each other and hear each other’s stories beyond the installation experience.
This project was created by Xin Wen (DEA ‘20), Mikail Masqood (Arch ‘21), Sheri Guo (InfoSci ‘22), Joseph Yoon (ChemE ‘23), Connie Liu (InfoSci ‘23), and Benji Magin (Arch ‘21) as part of Cornell’s Medium Design Collective’s Incubates Team!
For more information and other projects see formsofbelonging.com and cornellmedium.design