Brief
How might we help queer women be seen, be heard and be supported by helping them explore themselves and express themselves freely?
Common Sisters is a story-sharing platform and decentralized queer support network that includes queer women's perspectives. As a branch website of The Common Press and an experimental model from a broader queer perspective, It uses storytelling toolkits and art as interventions to help queer, Gen Z, and millennial women connect, share their stories, and feel proud; explore themselves, resonate, gain support, and speak out to have a wider impact.
Through user-centred design research and agile exploration, I empowered London's famous queer community space to truly understand its customers; and through the development of innovative business models, I built a sustainable queer support network framework for the space to expand its impact.
User activity on Instagram increased by 60%
Offline activity participation and feedback increased
Promoted the development of subsequent subscription services.
Partner: The Common Press x Royal College of Art
Year: Feb - May 2023, solo graduation project at RCA
Grade: Excellent 5/5
Scope of work: Service design, UX design, User Research, Journey mapping, Storyboarding
Tool: Figma, Canva, Adobe suite
Executive Summary
During the graduation project, I collaborated with The Common Press, exploring the plight of queer women and the potential of their community spaces. The Common Press is the finest LGBTQIA+ multidisciplinary venue based in the heart of East London, featuring an intersectional bookshop cafΓ©, a large events space, and a queer bar.
I worked closely with executives and event organizers at The Common Press. In the early stages, I conducted multiple stakeholder interviews to understand The Common Pressβ ecosystem, operations, challenges, and community status. In the later stages, I conducted usability testing to collect timely feedback.
I learned that:
It aims to provide a safe space for queer people to thrive while facing some struggles with declining queer space.
In February 2023, the spaceβs bar area closed, like many queer spaces around the world.
They had always wanted to listen to the real ideas of queer people to improve the services, but they donβt know how.
They hope to increase revenue channels other than selling books, coffee, and space rental.
Context
Sexual identity and society are currently being hotly debated. Language is changing, laws are changing, and violence is happening, from cancel culture to extreme activism - self-identity is at an all-time high, amplified by the media and interest groups around the world.
People increasingly tend to define themselves by their beliefs, gender, sexual orientation or race.
Society is both polarised between inclusive/exclusive and diversity/monoculture.
Today, being LGBTQ+ means:
facing rejection from family and friends;
social prejudice and violence;
issues of self-identity and belonging;
divisive and cancelled.
Research Objective
Research Process
1V1 interviews - 60+ queer women
Gorilla research - managers in communities, queer individuals, queer events organizers, architects
Focus group - London LGBTQ+ Community Centre
System Mapping - stakeholders, journey, blueprint, business model
Participatory Research - Queer friendβs party, Voguing workshop, Art workshop
I spoke to β¦
60+ target audience - 1V1 with young queer women
to explore their plight and needs
10+ other individuals - 8+ visitors and 2 artists
to collect external perspectives
3 community workers - bookshop manager, event manager, centre manager
to learn about the challenges, vision and operating model of space
3 experts - architects, queer researchers
to learn about theory and research based on social structure
However, being a lesbian in a patriarchal society means being more marginalized than being a gay man, and the fact that a woman is same-sex attracted not only means that she faces the risk of being rejected by her friends, persuaded by her family to marry Men, becoming the targets of threats, physical assault, sexual violence and harassment, as well as discrimination in hiring practices and pervasive economic inequality. Because of their stigmatisation as women, they face restrictions and violations of their rights.
In the queer community, due to historical reasons, there is a lack of disseminators of queer womenβs history in the community.
And, due to increasing urbanization and gentrification, queer spaces around the world have gradually closed over the past few decades. As a result, there are fewer spaces for queer women to gather and there is a lack of stability.
How might we help queer women be seen, be heard and be supported by helping them explore themselves and express themselves freely?
The research combines social design and service design methodologies. It is based on 5-week volunteer works in LGBTQ+ communities.
Approach
I visited β¦
8 queer-friendly spaces - Gayβs the Word, community areas, museums, pubs, etc.
3 communities - The Common Press, London LGBTQ+ Community Centre, Queerpack London
8 community activities - Queer Diary, Book club, Community chat, Voguing workshop, Queerpack social, Queer gaming, Queer farm club feast, Queer East
What I learned from the research was queer women suffer from invisibility and stigmatization.
< Invisibility >
- What makes queer women invisible? -
Underrepresented in women's rights research, advocacy, and the media;
Historically erased from queer narratives, making individual's voices more invisible and unseen, not to be represented, not to be witnessed
Be ignored or oversimplified in the social science literature, there are challenges to the visibility of lesbians and how to normalise them from invisible groups
- How do queer women feel invisible? -
Collected manifestations
With themselves: proving βweirdβ by dressing
With friends & parents: not believed when coming out
Within the community: lack of acceptance sometimes
In society: assaulted and/or sexually harassed by heterosexual men; harassed as a straight woman
- Why does visibility matter? -
Visibility is a social process that helps queer women explore, recognize, accept themselves, and identify with each other through role models and representation.
It witness to queer women's identities, beings, desires, sexuality and empowers them to pursue themselves.
At the same time, it means that queer women can better find a sense of belonging and community to support each other so that their experiences, feelings and truest selves are seen, understood and witnessed , accepted and recognized;
It also means that they have more freedom to express and be heard.
Due to the sensitivity of queer topics, I collected queer women's perceptions and their expectations for the future anonymously by displaying prompt questions.
After talking to 30 queer women about their perceptions and experiences of invisibility during #lesbianvisibilityweek, I found that invisibility mainly refers to the lack of social acceptance of their identities due to stereotypes and the lack of diversity in how queer women look and act. However, the media representation under the patriarchy, which lack of diversity makes it difficult for them to form a social identity and spread their voices.
γObservation:
In the process of collecting anonymous opinions offline, a discussion was accidentally opened and attracted more people to join (as shown in the picture on the right). I recognized the desire of queer individuals to communicate with each other, and the potential of a nudge in opening dialogue spaces.γ
< Stigmatization >
- What is stigmatization? -
Stigmatisation means that queer women get stereotyped about what they should and cannot do in a patriarchal society.
- How do they feel stigmatized? -
Collected manifestations
With parents: take more responsibilities; be a good girl; to marry a man;
With same-sex friends: exploring the balance and trust building between desire and same-sex friendships
In LGBTQ+ community: barriers to choosing a partner due to sexual orientation stereotypes
In society: changes in appearance are seen as pleasing others rather than looking for oneself
- What do queer women desire? -
Through interview verification, they hope to be understood and see more role models, which can help them see themselves and their expectations for an ideal future from similarities. Role models not only appear in the media but also in everyone in the community.
What I did β¦
First, I posted a physical survey in a prominent place in The Common Press bookstore, asking visitors "What does it mean to be a queer woman today?", but at first the response was low. Then, I realized that the topic was sensitive and visitors lacked motivation to participate, so I quickly adjusted my research method...
I quickly iterated my research approach and travelled to key queer womenβs communities and events in London. I used 1v1 interviews, group discussions, and participatory research to interact with queer women visitors, activity participants, researchers and an activity organizer. I used sensitive language and open-ended interviews to ensure inclusivity and ethics.
I collected research information and organized and summarized it in a way that centred on respondent information and user needs.
What I did β¦
I invited 20+ queer women to write anonymous letters of their personal stories, self-reflections, and life milestones, collected their experiences of being stigmatised, and tested their motivations for writing letters as a prototype.
This not only verifies the needs of queer women to interact and express with real people in queer space; it also emphasizes their deep desire of being seen, heard, accepted, and understood for a wider social impact
< Insights - queer womenβs space >
- What is queer space for queer women? -
For them, queer spaces arenβt just places to meet or drink, theyβre community hubs where people can feel safe, be themselves, thrive themselves and learn about histories.
- By surveying the status quo -
Urban spaces often donβt make queer women feel safe, equally welcome, or belong, making queer women-friendly spaces in cities become discontinuous.
And during the past decades, queer venues have been rapidly declining globally, which has been driven by complex social and economic changes, and are interwoven with the
- From observation in The Common Press -
Lack of connections and opportunities to meet:
In The Common Press, many customers from other cities hope to have more opportunities to interact with people , but because of limited access or unknown space, many people can only read books alone and go to the next destination;
- From observation in the queer community -
Lack of sustainable communities:
Lack of historical communicators;
The current queer female community and activities are mainly centralized activities. Due to the high-speed population mobility in the community and in the city, the community is unstable
Community connections are more based on individuals and lack sustainable community mechanisms to support everyone, and their voices are unheard by a wider community
What I did β¦
First, I visited several queer spaces in London, centered around TCP, and conducted gorilla interviews with 15 queer women to collect their visions and experiences of queer communities and spaces.
Additionally, I conducted ethnographic research by visiting various spaces in the community and participating in various queer events, observing operations and participation.
How might we enable every queer woman who comes to the space to participate in communication or creation, connect, express themselves, make a difference, have some takeaway, or even become an influencer?
Design Direction
How might we use The Common Press as a culture hub platform to help queer women be seen, be heard and be supported by helping them explore themselves and express themselves safely and freely?
To refine the strategy and specify the design plan, I once again "asked for help" from queer women to co-create solutions while drawing as detailed a queer support landscape as possible.
I organized a workshop at The Common Press's bookshop space, inviting queer women, activity operators and bookshop senior stakeholders to join in and quickly collect and communicate various ideas.
After this, I designed a series of interventions from a strategic point of view.
Intervening through a service named Common Sisters, I developed the story-sharing platform built for the bookshop centered on this intersectional space, and an experimental model from a wider queer perspective, including the queer women's community.
Mission
Create a decentralized queer support network and safe space, allowing a wider range of queer women to engage, express, and resonate, thereby expanding the social influence of queer women and the queer brand of The Common Press.
Delivery
Step1: Offline engagement toolkit
Contains postcards based on the storytelling toolkit, DIY badges, a dialogue where you can freely create characters, post questions, and reply to questions
Aims to help individuals participate in voices by answering questions, posting questions, creating art and sharing stories
Dialogue not only helps queer women support each other but also an empathetic space for more people to know what they hope to be told when struggling, while providing free space for opening new conversations
Step3: Story-sharing website
Ensure accessibility of the site by establishing touchpoints on Discord and the official The Common Press site;
Queer women share their stories based on categories of topics on the website so that more people can hear the voices of queer women
Queer women can share stories inspired by books based on a story-sharing toolkit to resonate with more people
Step2: Discord discussion group
Ensure the accessibility of the service platform by establishing physical touchpoints in bookstores;
Facilitate queer women sharing stories, exchanging experiences, connecting, etc.
Roadmap
Common Sisters is a platform that helps queer, Gen Z and millennial women connect, share stories, and be proud. The Common Press can market through a collaborative network and use the platform to bring together queer women, host events, distribute information, build a digital network of mutual support, and create an influential, externalizable community.
Feedback from the space
β Super exciting!! I've never seen a bookstore doing anything like this! I do get many queer women who told me they want to talk to people. Hope to make it realized ASAP! β
ββ Alfonzo, The Common Press manager
β This is so cool! Iβm so happy to see people can connect with others and I want this! β
ββ April, a reader in The Common Press
Value & Impact
Once the platform and service are widely developed, we can start to better build the entire service.
Common sisters, as a community participation framework that gathers queer women, includes a variety of participation mechanisms and media.
By then, perhaps we wonβt need #lebianvisibilityweek anymore, and the stories of queer women and queer individuals more broadly will be gathered and integrated within the community, and be seen digitally every day. People stand together and every day will be a celebration.
Future development
Last but not least β¦
Exceptionally thanks to my tutor David Eveleigh Evans for precious guidance and support; I would like to thank Alfonzo from The Common Press and Lip from The LGBTQ+ Community Center for sharing with me their queer experiences, insights and visions as community operators!
Also, I want to thank every single person I've met and talked to along the way! π
