https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/secure.notion-static.com/838fd091-3e2d-4e73-81f9-93d32c063163/sesamamu.trimmed.mp4
sesama.mu is a Q&A trivia game addressing social bonding issues among certain members in young Christian cell communities, backed by qualitative research with communities from different churches.
Many members are active in their groups, but some others feel left out or become socially inactive due to shyness, privacy, lack of attention, or even fear of judgement. The question is: how we can improve their social bonding whilst bypassing these barriers?
GitHub repo: https://github.com/baskoroi/sesamamu
Keynote: https://www.dropbox.com/s/2l8hoy300zf87mr/sesamamu-mc3.pdf?dl=0
For our research, given the social nature of communities, we heavily rely on qualitative research. We interview more than 10 Indonesian community members and leaders from Indonesia and other countries.
Based on our interviews, we found two types of members in cell communities: active and inactive. Regarding how they distinguished the inactive members from the active, our interviewees used percentage of members attending the sessions, their willingness to share, and the quality of shared experiences. Digging deeper to know why, we found that some members chose to remain idle, mostly due to their busy schedules, or the lack of comfort or readiness to share their stories in such a big community, i.e. the moment or place to share isn't right. But since humans are social beings, they still need communities, whatever the type: spiritual or worldly.
From the cell leaders we interviewed, they mentioned that they, too, encouraged all members to share. They try their best to make the community as close as a family, so they feel comfortable enough to open up. They make various types meetings, such as discussing their weekly sermons or themes, everyday lives, boys' and girls' talk, games, and also hanging out altogether, especially before the pandemic. Nonetheless, somehow the active members become more active and the inactive ones were still silent. Leaders also tried to share their stories first to 'trigger' others to share.
As our Indonesian idiom says, "tak kenal maka tak sayang". Meaning: they have to know each member inside-out, to make them feel loved and cared. Once this close bonding is achieved, they tend to dig deeper about their community and follow most or every activity that help them bond more with the communities.
So, the best way to make them share is to ask them first. Most members need triggers like some starter topics or questions to have them share, e.g. "How's your family doing?". The open-ended question allow them to share more, compared to easy yes/no questions.
But as Christian communities, we have to keep the social and spiritual aspects balanced. Based on our interview, fellowship is their favorite activity to do so with others. They like to hang out, grab some food or have dinners after the cell community, go on night trips together, or playing games together. These activities help them bond deeper with each other, so not only do they experience spiritual growth, but they could feel like they're home. Such activities could be considered to resolve their lack of activeness in their communities.
In response to the issues above, we provide the following features in the game:
I am the full stack engineer for this app. We, the team, use: