Relational Encounters: Negotiating Communication Barriers During the COVID-19 Pandemic

This thesis aims to explore and honor how people are trying to connect with each other during the isolation required by COVID-19. I embarked on a personal journey to understand how people were experiencing the barriers of communication when social distancing became necessary. The relational encounters among family, friends, and strangers have changed drastically. The care and connection that was once expressed through physical contact like hugs, pats on the shoulder, or wrapping one’s arms around each other, is now reduced to a restricted point of contact, such as through a window or across a distance. These small moments of interactions have proven to be jewels of connections under challenging times. Experiencing this firsthand myself further validated the trajectory of my research. Through a process of journaling, auto-ethnography, storytelling, story gathering, and story listening, I researched new characteristics of human relationships and connections formed among families and communities. The unconventional interactions that I saw taking place through windows and across other thresholds have deeply resonated with me. I asked myself, as a designer, how can I use storytelling as a method to aid social innovation to create a space of engagement within a community? Can design support the generation of new narratives where the families, friends, and fellow community members feel included and connected to each other? I have been observing interactions happening through windows outside of care homes. It inspired me to search for ways to support interactions and channels of communication in these constrained and challenging times. The design-driven outcome, Khirki, has proposed a narrative environment where the audience can physically, emotionally, and intellectually participate that will help to bring people together safely across barriers and appreciate precious moments of shared time.