Facilitating the first move: Exploring inspirational design patterns for aiding initiation of social encounters

Actualizing positive social encounters remains both a key ends and means in many activities to foster a sense of community. Initiating encounters between strangers typically requires facilitative activities or artefacts, such as icebreakers or tickets-to-talk. However, there is little understanding of which designs are effective and why, and the broad design space remains largely underexplored. We address this challenge by presenting five candidates for inspirational design patterns on signaling social intentions and identifying impediments that deter commencement of encounters. The principles result from an extensive review of design cases and public art installations. Through focus groups and expert interviews, we assessed the perceived applicability and social acceptance of the proposed patterns. Three new design principles relating to the risks of initiating an encounter emerged through analyzing participant responses. These articulations of possible approaches and pitfalls for increasing conviviality may broaden the repertoire of, and support discussion between designers and others concerned with collocated social interaction.