WeTransfer launches ‘Snap Who’ game during London Design Festival for users to learn about unconscious bias

Image credit: Illustrations by Bijou Karman for WeTransfer

LONDON, UK - September 17, 2022 - WeTransfer, a leading provider of creative productivity tools, today announces the launch of ‘Snap Who’ an online game on wetransfer.com alongside this year’s London Design Festival. The game invites WeTransfer’s 87 million monthly active users to learn about their unconscious bias in a fun, interactive way for free and is available in perpetuity.   

‘Snap Who’ was developed by WeTransfer’s in-house creative studio team of designers. It’s part of Studio Lab, an internal, non-commercial research and development initiative launched in 2019 with the goal for the team to experiment, innovate and learn outside their day-to-day work. For this year’s initiative, the brief was to create an online experience that could help educate WeTransfer’s users about their own biases, while providing an opportunity to learn about how bias impacts creativity. 

WeTransfer enlisted the expertise of Professor Karen McCormack, a sociology professor at Wheaton College, USA to bring this to life in collaboration with WeTransfer as a game that users could play on the platform. The decision to work with a consultant sociologist was rooted in how sociology can increase our receptiveness to new ideas and change, by understanding how our social environment or personal ideas about the world can shape our thoughts and interactions. 

To make the experience more compelling, WeTransfer commissioned LA-based illustrator Bijou Karman to supply the illustrations within the experience, which is populated with psychedelic and fluid designs reminiscent of acid-tinged kaleidoscopic lava lamps. These serve as visual metaphors for our ability to form and feel new thoughts. Users are given five seconds to select one of Karman’s character illustrations in response to prompts such as ‘Most likely to use TikTok’ or ‘Most likely to listen to classical music’. At the end of the game, the player is shown whether they made the right choice and are given tips by Professor McCormack based on the latest sociological research, with the goal to educate us about why assumptions we make about the people around us matter when making decisions. 

Diana Alcausin, Associate Creative Director, WeTransfer, “As a certified B Corp, it’s really important to us that we find ways to integrate these values in every corner of our business. This is why we created Snap Who - we want the ads we make for clients to sit alongside content that is innovative and engaging while being socially responsible. Being aware of our biases is actually a unique opportunity to expand our creativity -- when you start to see the world around you from different perspectives it can lead to new and exciting ideas, which we hope will positively impact the work we do for our advertising clients.”

Since the company's inception, WeTransfer has donated 30% of its advertising inventory to artists and social causes to promote ideas that can be a force for good. WeTransfer became a certified B Corporation in 2020 and Climate-Neutral in 2021. 

Link to Snap Who on WeTransfer: https://snapwho.wetransfer.com/ 

Hashtags: #WeTransferStudioLab #SnapWho

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Notes to Editors:

WeTransfer panel discussion at the Technology & Design Lab during London Design Festival

- Diana Alcausin, Associate Creative Director at WeTransfer will be taking part in a panel discussion titled ‘Creativity, Digital platforms & Ethics’ alongside speakers Mariasole Pastori (design industry expert), Maxim Zhestkov (interdisciplinary artist) and moderated by Emily Benn (British politician and policy expert)

- They will discuss projects such as ‘Snap Who’ and the role of designers and creatives in building new infrastructures, experiences and tools and the role of unconscious bias in human centered design

- The Technology & Design Lab will take place on Tuesday 20th September between 2-6:30pm at the House of Koko. 

See event information here 

About WeTransfer

WeTransfer streamlines the workflow process for millions of creative professionals. Its ecosystem of creative productivity tools makes it easy to collaborate, share and deliver work. WeTransfer has more than 87 million monthly active users in 190 countries.

As a certified B Corporation™, WeTransfer has long been a champion of using business as a force for good. Since its founding in 2009, WeTransfer has donated up to 30% of its advertising space to support artists and social causes.