Helptolites is a social activism tool that allows young people to select areas of interest and engage with small but meaningful causes for their community. Using a digital platform, Helptolytes will facilitate the coordination between young people and create a visualisation of collective impact inspired by the Stromatolites, a colony of bacteria. Changing the status quo feels like an impossible task for an individual, however, breaking down the problem in smaller action promotes participation and engagement.
According to the European Democracy Hub, young university students between 18 and 30 years old are attuned to social causes and feel detached from the modern political landscape. However, even if they are interested in activism causes, they tend not to participate. One of the reasons is the perception of low impact of individual actions, on the other hand, the high coordination effort motivates young people to be proactive and participative in social causes.
Through the Biological Scales course, the team defined the following design question:
How might we enable university students (18–30) to share power and responsibility in order to reduce the effort required to mobilise for social activism, while increasing the perceived collective impact of their actions?
The main inspiration for solving this problem came from nature. The team focuses on understanding how nature manages power and responsibility within a community. There are three different approaches in nature:
Stromatolites manage power and responsibility based on individual preference and communication
European starlings distribute responsibility through small and local groups.
Ant colonies have a community-based approach, where the individuals act according to the entire colony needs.
These three mentors and their strategies inform the design process by combining their strengths. Helptolites support students to organize themselves into smaller groups, ensuring the communication between individuals. Through the digital platform, users find the information about what is happening across the network, with visual representation on the collective impact created over time. Finally, the objective is to incentivise the coordination of small and community-based actions, according to students interest and possibilities.
