MINI BRIEF — UX OF TEA (2) — TEA PARTY AS A RESEARCH METHOD

Brief: design a multi-sensory social experience centred around the act of drinking tea
Timeframe: 29/06/23–06/07/23

Team: Rebecca Hodge, Roshni Suri, Tanya Singh & myself

READ ABOUT THE RESEARCH AND EARLY IDEATION CONDUCTED FOR THIS PROJECT HERE

Everyone loves tea. Tea is the best. Tea works.

It brings people together, it makes us slow down, talk to each other, share in the warmth and the comfort. And that is exactly why we decided to lean into the tea experience and consider it as a tool to foster safe space for communication and understanding.

This is the mindsent from which we arrived at our final idea — tea party — the research method.

TEA PARTY — THE RESEARCH METHOD

The four of us enter our design studio. The tables are set up for our regular roundtable Thursday presentation. We bring out the picnic-coloured tablecloths and begin setting up the tea party. We unwrap the cake first, we unpack muffins on the plate, we open the pancake container, we stir the iced tea. We bring in the Le Creuset and start steeping the special occasion loose leaf earl grey.

The smell of tea fills the room, the atosphere changes. Everyone circles around the table with the food and tea, the inviting atmosphere luring everyone in like (adorable and beloved MA level) flies.

We offer tea and cakes, we ask our classmates about their day, we talk about our respective projects, we give each other feedback and offer advice. We receive compliments about our baking and humbly swat them away. It's nothing, it's just tea.

The mood is good, the tummies are full, the hands warm. The niceties are flowing, no one is leaving the table, no one is leaving the conversation. Yes you may have another slice of cake, yes of course, let me pour you another cup.

TEA PARTY — REFLECTIONS ON UTILISING THE RESEARCH METHOD IN PARTICIPATORY DESIGN

We have had a Thursday feedback session in our studio every week since the course commenced in October 2022. But it was not the same without the tea. The food on table created an accommodating presence around which people gathered— the experience of sharing in the eating and the drinking kept everyone interested and present.

We inspected the phenomenon closer, found its theoretical grounding in participatory research. Shared food experiences 1 could serve to enhance Community-Based Participatory Research (CBPR) practices — a research method which utilises community engagement as an active part of the research process.

Social eating — eating together — increases social bonding and enhances sense of contentedness and embedding within the community. This connectedness makes a case for including tea-drinking and cake-eating in research. Gathering around food is a familiar interaction, something we learned in our homes, in high-school dinning hall, in college flat-shares, and inviting friends or to dine remains a regular social activity in most societies, widely regarded as both the height of hospitality and an important way of getting to know people.

Exactly what it is about eating and drinking together — other than sharing the same space and performing the same activity — that creates intimacy and fosters bonding isn’t completely clear, but one might suggest that laughter and exchange of stories play an important role.

Shared food experience then fosters a distinctive type of participatory research setting. It allows for meaningful conversations and interactions between researchers and participants, transforming them into co-producers of knowledge 2. Unlike traditional research methods where researchers often guide the agenda, eating together enables participants to immerse themselves in an environment driven by their own priorities and interests 3.

By embracing food as a form of CBPR, researchers step away from the conventional approach of merely reporting insights about participants, and instead, they treat participants as equal partners in the research journey, valuing their perspectives, fostering genuine connections, embracing the collaborative nature of knowledge creation and promoting a co-creative research experience 4.

REFERENCES:

(1–4) Heck, J., Rittiner, F., Meboldt, M. and Steinert, M., (2018) Promoting user-centricity in short-term ideation workshops. International Journal of Design Creativity and Innovation, 6 (3–4), 130–145.

(1–4) Holkup, P. A., Tripp-Reimer, T., Salois, E. M., Weinert, C. (2004). ‘Community-based participatory research: an approach to intervention research with a Native American community’. ANS. Advances in nursing science, 27(3), 162–175.

(1–4) Marsha, S., 'Using eating together to think: reflections on doing research at public mealtimes' (2020), Coventry University CURB blog.

Dunbar, R.I.M. Breaking Bread: the Functions of Social Eating. Adaptive Human Behavior and Physiology 3, 198–211 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40750-017-0061-4