7.1 Key Conclusions to Research Questions
What were immigrants’ experiences like settling down in new environment? People felt exposed and insecure in environments where they looked or sounded different from others e.g. skin colour, spoken language. They wanted to feel a sense of belonging to society, and be part of a community which made them feel safe. Actively seeking out those who were like them, and could help them understand social mores of the environment, were important in settling in to a new place.
What are the barriers to social integration? Immigrants might not be proficient in the main spoken language and locals would most probably not be fluent in foreign languages — this formed communication barriers between immigrants and locals. Locals might feel a sense fear of the unknown — immigrants — and the challenges of communication did not help them to understand each other better.
What are the key design principles for building relationships between immigrants and locals? Firstly, make it fun for diverse groups to participate; secondly, develop genuine relationships through respect and trust; lastly, discuss issues relevant to immigrants and locals holistically.
Success would be achieved if people made more friends of other ethnic heritages, the number of participants in the Healthy Chefs grew from year-to-year, and participants report delightful experiences through the Healthy Chefs initiative.
Limitations and Recommendations
As Demireva (2015) noted, issues about immigration could often turn into “heated debates that are often based on extrapolations and assumptions”; social integration is a multidimensional issue which had to be tackled holistically — a standalone intervention would not be sufficient to take on such complex problems. In addition, immigration issues could be intertwined with other diversity issues such as poverty and gender discrimination, and these other factors could complicate the study of social integration as well. The “Healthy Chefs” concept would also require furthur real-world testing and implementation to see if it works as envisioned.
Based on these limitations the following recommendations for further research are made:
All three organisations — MRSN, FN4M, and Action for Blind People — could be brought together to explore the possibility of pilot testing the final solution. This could also mark the start of future collaborations between them in other areas, to leverage on each other’s strengths, building win-win relationships among them to enhance each other’s work.
Researchers in the emerging field of transition design could also build upon the work of this research by performing a more in-depth study and engagement with the communities through the Healthy Chefs concept to explore possible interventions at the systems level.
Contributions to Knowledge
This study contributes to new knowledge about the application of experience design to tackling the problem of social integration between immigrants and locals. The contributions to knowledge of this study have been two-fold.
Firstly, while community development and social integration concepts were well-established in social science, they were not as evident in the field of experience design yet, even though the human-centred design had been well-represented in the social project work of organisations such the UNHCR and ideo.org. This research study therefore contributes to knowledge by representing a formal way of moving the topic of social integration into the academic field of experience design study. This is supported by the results of research in Chapters 4 and 5, and data analysis in Chapter 6. That is, this study has contributed to the following findings:
· People felt insecure in environments where they appeared from others and they wanted to feel a sense of belonging to society, so as to feel safe. Designing experiences which allowed them to reach out to those who were like them, and could help them understand social mores of the environment, were important in settling in to a new place.
· However, immigrants might face language barriers since locals would most probably not be fluent in their native languages. This forms a communication barrier between immigrants and locals which results in lack of understanding between each other, leading to a sense of fear of the unknown, for both immigrants and locals. Experiences which could break down this barrier and bring greater understanding between them would be useful.
Secondly, the possibilities for integrating immigrants and locals are wide. Therefore the second contribution to knowledge of this study is to point out the potential opportunity areas for designers who wished to enhance social integration, to zoom into. The key design principles help guide their designs of solutions, and the final solution presented here highlights one possible means of applying these principles and turning them into a feasible concept.
