Overview

In the fast-paced world of work, effective communication is a cornerstone of building positive relationships among colleagues and within oneself. The project at hand seeks to address a critical challenge: how can we harness the rhythm and tonality of our words to foster a deeper understanding and collaboration among various forms of expression in the workplace?

The project's primary objective is to enhance the quality of relationships we have, both with ourselves and with others, within the context of our professional lives. To achieve this, we will explore innovative approaches that emphasise the importance of linguistic nuance, non-verbal cues, and diverse forms of expression.

We will delve into the subtle art of rhythmic communication, examining how the cadence, pacing, and melody of our words can impact our interactions. This exploration will encompass verbal and non-verbal elements, such as body language and vocal intonation.

‍

"We live in a digital world, but people still feel most comfortable communicating love in person"

‍

‍

Bringing design to life

This projects aim is to help bring together different cultural touchpoints of communicating and expressing love. This is to foster an understanding of how one communicates to the self ( internally ) and to others ( externally ) in hopes to create a healthy modern working environment that is not driven by fear.

Key InsightsMy initial research was captured by a hyperdiverse user group. I wanted to ensure that the answers came from vastly different cultures (those who self-identify and respective cultures). This ranges from "third culture kids" to American-Chinese and from single upbringing roots eg. purely French.1. How do you express love?- Surprisingly most people expressed love by actions and lest being psychical touch, this was most prevalent from people who identified being of an Asian and Romanian cultural background 2. Growing up how where you mainly shown love- People being there for me was the majority of the answer whereas words of affirmation were lest concerning.

This comes into question the age-old saying actions speak louder than words3. What channel do you find most comfortable communicating love through?- 66% had said in person, which in a tech age is comforting to hear that in person is still a need a priority for people to express themselves. It puts an even better case forward for designing with layers in mind because not everyone has the privilege of being with each other in physical form all the time.4. Where do you feel lacks love and needs more of it?The workplace. We spend the most time at our place of work so how can this space be a model for love and appreciation. "Workplaces are too serious at times, hardly people show love and appreciation for each other"

‍

‍

Design

This idea is to nudge people post their meetings or work events when speaking to stakeholders, clients, co-workers on their individual communication methods. This is to gently coach them into meeting the needs of others and themselves to conduct better working relationships with themselves and their day-to-day interactions.It will look like an online plug-in tool that gathers data (with consent) from your workplaces suite systems to analyse how you interact with your style of speaking and communication. To then be able to use as mini report after your meeting to understand how well you left room for others to speak, enough engaging words and inclusive languages. It will be able to match up with another person's report so that you can learn their preferred language and foster loving and understanding speech in environments where this is seen as not important or even a weakness.

Next Steps

1) Connect with a psychologist who specialises in non-verbal communication. This collaboration will provide valuable insights and practical experience in understanding and utilising non-verbal communication techniques effectively. The aim is to gain a deeper understanding of these methods without judgment.

2) The project will progress towards the creation of a functional prototype to serve as a tangible representation of the concepts and strategies developed for improving communication. Testing the prototype within a government setting will help assess its practicality and effectiveness in real-world scenarios.

‍