Project Alola
Beginning - Research
The name
Before explaining to you what Alola is, I prefer to tell you how the name came about. I love this word. We wanted something easy to pronounce for two reasons : we are working with children and they speak different languages. I’ll explain everything to you in a bit.
First we thought about different onomatopoeic words like « doki doki », « toc toc », « ping pong »…. Ping pong was a good possibility because our project is an exchange (connection, aller-retour). We also imagined using adventurer's names : Corto, Robinson, James…. but it wasn’t exactly the subject. We considered « Rosetta stone » as a strong symbol possibility, but unfortunately it was too famous. As we are a group of five working on the project, we had a lot of time to iterate.
One morning one of us arrived with this idea (I think it’s Aline). So « Why not Aloha ?», Yes, “aloha” means “hello”, it is simple, it is an introduction for a conversation. It’s also a journey, it’s not an every day « hello ». For me it’s a « voyage ». I want to follow it.
We all loved this idea and we did a little benchmark. PAPAPAPA, Aloha is maybe the most commonly used name for associations : big deception. That’s why we tried to play with it, and Alola appeared graphically. As it’s a palindrome, you can read it in 2 ways.
It’s also « Allo là ! » because we wanted it to be a wake up call ;)
Genesis
It’s hard to sum-up how and why we started working on this subject and that’s part of the Hive.
We are 5 « women »: Aline (fashion maker), Claire (mathematician & coder), Lea (designer), Sandile (graphic designer) and I (UX & Service designer) . We all decided to follow Lea who used to work with children and wanted to build a humanist and ecological kit for them. The goal was to open « their minds before becoming teenagers ». We ideated for a few weeks around these kits. We wanted to create a correspondence between children from all around the world. This correspondence was supposed to be an occasion to learn about the others ecological, social, and cultural contexts. It could be the last idea of the project but we had a morning awakening (like for the name).
It’s Lea this time who arrived one Monday and asked us a very simple question : « Why do we want to connect children from far if France and our specific area ( Provence), have this problem of integration. Can’t we learn here about other cultures and languages ? ». It was a collective pivot.
More than a kit or a correspondence we decided to create exchanges between refugee kids and local ones. It was the priority for us to start with this focus.
Research
In my previous article I mentioned that June was our prototyping month ; So, sorry, it wasn’t. It was a research and immersive month instead.
As we were naive and just knew what the media was telling us, we learnt a looot in one month. We met different associations, experts and schools to understand what kind of needs we could answer.
So, as this subject is very sensible, political and also « popular » we made different choices :
- We can’t save the situation that’s why Alola is not for children when they are in emergency situations
- We are not psychologists or experts, so we have to bring fun and we don’t focus on personal stories
- Refugee kids are going to school and they learn fast. It’s harder for their parents who can’t work. For these families, holidays, weekends, and Wednesdays are complex moments : it’s off time.
- Associations are overbooked, they try to plan activities but they need ideas, money, time and people. We met different « service civique » who have to organize activities.
We did a few surveys and interviews of local children :
- They don’t realize that other children can be refugees, it’s more an “adults world”
- Their feelings around the global situation is “ bienveillant “
Project
We want to bring refugees and local kids together for a peer to peer and cultural exchange. The project is a mix between tools, low tech effects, games, arts…
It will be collective and playful : “ a moment of lightness for each participants ”.
It’s too early to share Alola’s solutions and prototypes.
We are doing a use case this summer with a CADA, a delivery day in September and we plan a big dream for after ( in 2019).
The idea is to design the solution with children and to think today an “after Hive” for Alola.
see you soon
