Projekt

Harshita Parnami, Ana Parra and Luciano Quinones - Integrated Design Semesterprojekt

Salsa Box

Winter Semester 2020/21

Studio

Prof. Petra Müller-Csernetzky

Dance is considered an art form that consists of sequences of movements, with an added artistic and symbolic value. Dance can be defined by its steps and historical period or place of origin. In the case of Salsa, it originated in the 1960s in New York City. Is an amalgamation of Puerto Rican, Dominican and Cuban dances born in the 1950s as well as American jazz dances. 

In Salsa culture, synchronization between the mind and the body is known as "El Sabor" and it goes back to the roots of the dance which involves spiciness, passion, and fire, which are released throughout the body while dancing. Although many movies and videos are available on the web on how to dance salsa, it is difficult to find some valuable material on how to learn to master the flow of it in order to make the experience enjoyable. Hence, the question arises -  How to embrace “el Sabor” as a non-Latin in order to feel the flow of salsa dancing? 

Therefore, the main objective of this study is to find the right stimuli that guide non-Latin users to experience El Sabor as the first step of their salsa dancing journey. In order to reach our goal, we based on action research methodology in which we used video analysis and observation and then conducted structured interviews with 20 subjects. Consequently, those responses were analyzed using the open and template coding methods. The final results suggest that an immersive design proposition using the right stimuli in addition to the user's engagement can create a meaningful user experience and a proper learning environment. 

Even though the results showed that the homemade salsa box was a successful approach for introverted users in a pandemic situation; we believe there is space for improvement and further prototyping could be done. 

Keywords: Design thinking. Salsa dancing. El sabor. Qualitative research. Design research