Reimagining Rituals
A Mobile Application to help the Parsi diasporic community connect to their culture
UI/UX Design and Research | Communication Design | UX Strategy | Interaction Design | Systems Design
My research focuses on the Parsi diaspora, its disengagement with tradition, its lack of access and its desire to conduct and participate in their cultural rituals. Employing the methods of autoethnography, participatory research, and cultural design, my research explores the cultural practices of the Parsi community to understand the current role that rituals play in their lives and the barriers to performing these rituals.
I discovered evidence of the community's desire to make the steps behind Parsi Rituals and their significance more accessible. I focused on developing a digital application (app) to express and explore responses to my research findings. This app serves as a repository and almanack that will allow community members to access rituals and traditions by disseminating information about how the rituals are conducted, the materials used, and the events and beliefs upon which they are based.
At a broader level, the research serves as both a guide and an invitation for the Parsi community: to connect more profoundly to one's community through the practice of our cultural rituals and to share their knowledge with Parsis from around the world. Above all, it will show how we as a community can use contemporary tools to help us stay true to our culture and traditions.
The process can be divided into two phases:
1
Research
Questionnaire
Ritual Talks
2
Designing the App
The Personas
The features of the App
The questionnaire I created was aimed at gauging my audience's connections to Parsi rituals.
There were two main takeaways I gained from this.
Skills:
UI/UX Design,
Communication Design,
Tools Used:
InDesign
Illustrator
Photoshop
Key Insights:
1
A lack of connection towards our rituals
2
The best way to receive information
3
Adapting and Adjusting
The Features
01
The Calendar
As most of our re-occurring rituals are performed on a specific day or month, and we celebrate milestones according to both, the Shehenshai, as well as the Gregorian Calendar, I proposed to overlay them both on this feature.
03
Community
The next feature is the community.
This exists so that the users of the app are able to connect with each other within a virtual space and continue to build a sense of community within the diaspora.
02
The Ritual Repositoy
The next feature is the repository. This contains an extensive list of our rituals. These are both religious and cultural as well as re-occurring and once-in-a-lifetime events.
04
Account
Lastly, the account section, which gathers all the users information
For the logo, I wanted something that would feel familiar and yet new in its visual language.
I started by using the Farohar, a commonly recognised symbol of our faith and community, and adapted and streamlined it to have a more modern feel.
I then took a typographic approach towards the idea of Reimagining Rituals and worked with the concept of reflection, adapting, and adjusting to create the logo.