BUSSING SOLUTIONS FOR THE GREATER GOOD

Service Design Sprint focused on homelessness in the city of Austin

40 people signed up for a weekend design sprint and were tasked with coming up with solutions to bring relief to homelessness in the city of Austin. Knowing that we only had 48 hours to go from concept to testable prototype, we were split into teams for a weekend of co-creation. Designers, city officials, and those experiencing homelessness worked together to meet needs of those in our community.

My team worked to meet the need of job accessibility and brought to life our solution, the Hustle Bussle.

Duration
48 Hours

My Role
UX Designer

Team of 2
I teamed up with a highly skilled Visual Designer and together we worked with those in the homeless community to design our solution.

My Contributions
User Interviews
Affinity Mapping
Persona Development
Creating Scope of Problem
User Flows
Scenarios
Usability Testing
Prototype
Project Presentation

Methods Involved
User Interviews
Affinity Mapping
Persona Development
User Journey
Task Analysis
Scenarios/User Flows
Sketches
Prototype

INITIAL RESEARCH

We began the weekend Friday night split into groups randomly. Within my group, I was able to talk with a woman about her realities living homeless in Austin. We talked through common pain points she experiences daily, including: Transportation, Housing, Safety, and Employment.

Based on our time talking with our friend experiencing homelessness and research from the City of Austin's Innovation Team, we did an exercise to brainstorm ideas. The exercise took real issues facing the homeless and randomly drew two other cards that had words or phrases on them to pair with it.

Example: one set we drew was 1) Housing 2) The Eiffel Tower and 3) Music Festival. From those word associations we were encouraged to let our minds run wild and write down any ideas the associations brought to mind on post-it notes. Based on those post-its, we formulated three ideas to expand on.

We then took those ideas and, as a collective group, did an exercise to evaluate all the ideas and give each idea we came across a score of 1-7. From this exercise we narrowed field down to the eight highest scoring ideas and each self-selected one idea that we wanted to ideate on over the next 2 days. And this began Team Hustle Bussle.

RESEARCH & IDEATION

The initial idea that brought the 4 of us together was "A food truck style vehicle that would provide mobile resources to the homeless." Rallying around the idea of bringing resources to the homeless, we began to evaluate our research and ask questions to begin thinking of potential solutions. We focused on three main pain points from our research: Documentation, Creativity, and Employment.

Documentation
Challenges with paperwork, such as ID's and important documentation, can prevent someone from having the necessary paperwork required to legally work. Participants shared how they weren't able to access employment because they weren't able to provide three forms of identification. How might we help people get and maintain their identifications?

Creativity
People experiencing homelessness have a lot of creative talent that the typical day labor market doesn't account for or know how to incorporate. Artistic creations can also be a form of therapy and self-care. Participants shared their backgrounds in arts ranging from photography to music to painting murals. How might we empower people to use their creative talents to earn an income and participate in Austin's creative community?

Employment
People have a variety of skills and past work experience. Participants came from disciplines ranging from an electrician apprenticeship to degrees from four year universities such as University of Texas, but for one reason or another faced debilitating obstacles to landing consistent employment. How might we match people with jobs that leverage a diversity of skills and talents?

Based on these findings, we dreamt up three different mobile solutions to test out:

1. Docs-On-Demand
2. The Craft Cart
3. The Makin' Money Mobile

USER INTERVIEWS

We conducted three interviews with people experiencing homelessness and asked them questions surrounding each of our three mobile solutions.

Example Questions

1. What would you expect to see on this truck? What resources do you think it would provide?
2. What would make you approach the truck and make it inviting? Where would you expect to see this truck?
3. Rank the three trucks in order of importance. Rank the three trucks in order of desirability.

USER RESEARCH SYNTHESIS

We wrote down all of our interview notes on post-its and created an affinity map to find patterns in our users wants and needs.

USER INSIGHTS

Average Ranking of Importance and Desirability:

1. The Makin' Money Mobile
2. The Craft Cart
3. Docs-On-Demand

Docs-On-Demand

• Users were confused and thought it was a medical assistance truck.
• Transportation to replace these items was an obstacle.
• Overall, thought document storage and replacement was important, but knew places they could get it replaced.

The Craft Cart

• Users were excited about the idea of classes for creativity and relaxation.
• The idea of learning a new craft was exciting to most users.
• Overall, the idea of having opportunities to create and take their mind off of their struggles was enticing, but did not rank as most desirable or important.

The Makin' Money Mobile

• Many of the pain points we found surrounded applying for jobs.
• Users shared that accessibility to applying to jobs was scarce. Many cited how although they could apply for jobs at the local library, they often felt unwelcome there and pressured to leave.
• While filling out job applications, users often had questions about how to fill out certain portions, but had no one to ask for answers.
• Overall, users ranked this solution as the most desirable and important in their hierarchy of needs.

Overall Winner: The Hustle Bussle
Using the feedback from our users and the stories they shared, it became clear to us that the need for a mobile job resource center would fill a gap in the services and opportunities provided. We did some user testing on possible names for our resource truck and thus, The Hustle Bussle was born.

EMPLOYMENT PAIN POINTS

Once we had chosen a direction for the resource truck, we looked back on our research and synthesized common pain points our users shared in their search to find employment.

1. Transportation Costs
   • An employment resource offices takes up available money and time and can be logistically disabling.
   • People need resources that are more centralized and easily accessed.
2. Confusing Applications
   • Applying for jobs often included confusing applications with no one to ask questions of.
3. Feeling Unwelcome
   • There is a general feeling of being unwelcome at current locations that provide access to wifi and computers, such as the library or Starbucks.

Overall Findings

• People need resources that are more centralized and easily accessed.
• People need a place to apply for jobs where they can ask quick questions and feel comfortable taking time to complete an application in a welcomed space.

PERSONA DEVELOPMENT

Based on the insights from our user interviews and previous research, we created a persona that encompassed the goals and pain points common to our friends experiencing homelessness. Chuck became our guide as we made decisions on how to best provide relief in the search to gain full time employment.

CITY PROBLEM
The City of Austin needs a way to provide sustainable infrastructure so that the amount of people experiencing homelessness will decrease.

SOLUTION
By providing a mobile experience we will eliminate common obstacles in the job seeking process and help people experiencing homelessness establish secure and sustainable employment.

WHY MOBILE?

• Greater scope of reach by being where the homeless are
• Using existing spaces
  • Current places with offerings for the homeless (ex: church meal offerings)
  • Parking lots and spaces currently unused/abandoned
• Saving on cost of brick and mortar
• Ability to repurpose the vehicle and assets for short term rentals and a sustainable revenue stream

CURRENT RESOURCES

Out of the ten job resource centers in Austin, only one is in downtown and it is the ARCH. Many of our interviewees shared how they avoided the ARCH because of unsafe and negative environments. The other resource centers are located closer to the edges of the city. This leaves a major gap in the resources available downtown.

 PROJECT VALUES

The Austin Innovation Team, the design sprint organizers, had collected research and come up with a list of 10 values they were working to bring to make guiding principles in the projects they created for Austin homeless. My partner and I talked through each value and chose three we believed would keep us in line with our users goals and be filters in which we could use to bring our truck to life.

ADDED INCENTIVES

Knowing that no path would be without its pitfalls and pain points, we asked ourselves how could help minimize user drop-off even in the midst of turbulent seasons. We thought through how we could add incentives along the user journey to help gain both more initial engagement with our services and provide opportunities to build long term relationships with our users.

(CLICK TO SEE FULL SCREEN)

PRESENTATION

We made it! After a long 48 hours, we put together our slide deck and settled in for the presentations. Each of the six teams were given10 minutes to share their processes and present their testable prototypes. People experiencing homelessness were invited from the community to act as judges and were given score cards to rate each project. Everyone from the weekend, designers, city officials, and homeless friends had the opportunity to share feedback and  encourage the work each team had labored on over the 48 hour sprint.

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