Brief

"The coronavirus pandemic is the backdrop to the foreseeable future for society, culture and business where ​everything​ needs to be redesigned for the better. The pandemic ​is​ an opportunity to design everything for the better. What are the opportunities? What is better? Who is it for?"

The goal of this project was to respond to 'The New Normal'. To create something that responds to how society, culture and business have all been forced to change, and how we have all had to adapt the ways in which we interact on both an individual and a societal level.

Solution

Folktiles is a storytelling platform with an emphasis on empathy and shared experience above popularity or peer approval. Intentionally anonymous and without a system of approval; each story is shown with equal importance with no regard for its perceived quality or value.

Folktiles is designed to break down the hierarchical structure of the social internet, a structure that has been exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic resulting in people feeling increasingly disconnected from the experience of others.

Journey

1. 1. Create your story

   
   As you type a Tensorflow.js model analyses the text for emotional sentiment and returns its insights.



2. 2. Data Representation

   
   The sentiment analysis data returned by Tensorflow are passed to a separate function that, using D3.js, generates a visual representation of the data. Each emotion has a specific shape associated with it, the likelihood of this shape appearing increases with the strength of that emotion.



3. 3. Share

   
   Once you're happy with the story you've written and the data representation that accompanies it, you can share it with the world. The story, and the data representations SVG is written to a MongoDB database. From there you're taken to a page where you see your own story alongside the stories and visualisations of others.



4. 4. Engage

   
   After you've submitted your story and it's data representation you're taken through to a screen in which you see your own story alongside that of others.
   From here you at first see only the data representation, but by clicking through the story that created it can be seen.