Common Ground
Can you build a connection with a complete stranger, without seeing or hearing them, in a brief period of time? Does knowing the name and home country of the other person influence how you play the game and how deep a connection you form? The game play is based on the interaction between two strangers in Dr. Arthur Aron’s psychology experiments from the 1990s, where the goal was to build an intimate connection between two people through a series of reciprocal questions. This project takes these experiments and transfers them to current digital platforms. The core questions from the experiments remain, but now the interaction takes place through a web app, resembling a chatbot. The questions themselves are asked and answered through not only text, but also images, music, video, emojis and gifs.
People labelled as ‘refugees’ are currently spending six months or more in camps in Europe where they are often unable to work and isolated from society. They are also often prejudged because of the aforementioned label they carry. Our web game aims to encourage integration and empathy. This project removes labels and therefore preconceptions by dispensing with appearance and voice. The user can only ask and answer specific questions to a stranger online, questions designed to build intimacy. The user will not know who they are playing the game with until the end, when they can learn about who has been answering their questions through personalised statistics and video/audio stories.
‘Common Ground’ is kindly and enthusiastically supported by Dr. Arthur Aron, Honig Studios, Techfugees, Amnesty International, ReDI School of Digital Integration, Trialog and Tamaja.
People labelled as ‘refugees’ are currently spending six months or more in camps in Europe where they are often unable to work and isolated from society. They are also often prejudged because of the aforementioned label they carry. Our web game aims to encourage integration and empathy. This project removes labels and therefore preconceptions by dispensing with appearance and voice. The user can only ask and answer specific questions to a stranger online, questions designed to build intimacy. The user will not know who they are playing the game with until the end, when they can learn about who has been answering their questions through personalised statistics and video/audio stories.
‘Common Ground’ is kindly and enthusiastically supported by Dr. Arthur Aron, Honig Studios, Techfugees, Amnesty International, ReDI School of Digital Integration, Trialog and Tamaja.