While we expierience your city through map-apps, social media and algorythms, queer spaces are dying.
How would a queer focused city exploration app & website look like and could a “queer super-app” be a way to revive local businesses and LGBT culture?
The here and now, and yesterday
Over the last 50 year, the way we explore a city for its queer scene and nightlife has hardly changed. Magazines handed out at bars, tourguides and tips from locals are required to find your way around the city. The reason: Queer spaces are often excluded from digital spaces owned by the big tech companies running maps, social media and payment. Companies cite “family friendly” content policies as the reason behind banning certain business-types, pictures and even terms from making it on its platforms and services.
But as a result, queer spaces have to disguise themselves to make it on these services or stay completely offline. And while most businesses are able to benifit from the digital market, LGBT businesses are forced to operate almost entirely like they used to and see their customers moving away to digital offerings like dating apps instead, erasing decades of queer nightlife culture.
“Drummer” Magazine from the Year 1979
Let’s bring it to the 21. century
Lets design a modern digital platform for users to explore their cities and queer businesses to promote and inform without the need to worry about take-downs and bans.
A unique perspective
The usual process when designing for a digital product is a careful balance of usability, brand recoginizability and universal appeal. But in this case we do not want “universal appeal”. Instead we can focus on building the best product for a very specific target audience and get inspired by its rich, colorful culture and history to make this audience feel right at home.
This approach is evident through all of the projects design language, from the core colors to the icons, carefully crafted to represent elements of queer culture.
Point of Interest Icons for different types of businesses.
Built with businesses in mind
The Queer Map does not rely on any outside databases as they are nutoriously homophobic and sex negative. Instead, users are able to submit listings and local businesses can claim their venues. A dedicated dashboard allows local businesses to update venues with detailed information, photos or opening-times. By posting events and interacting with users, they are able to help their business grow in a way not possible before.
Beyond the map…
City exploration is just one digital product which queer businesses are mostly excluded from. Almost all event ticketing platforms, digital point of sale systems and marketing solutions are out of reach for the community due to content policies.
Let’s invision the “Queer Super-App”!