PROJECT SUMMARY

ShelterTech is a technology-focused nonprofit organization in San Francisco that helps people at risk of eviction and homeless. They help them to find resources that can be helpful for their lives, such as food, toilet portable, and health assistance, using their site called SFServiceGuide. They also collaborate with the City of San Francisco and Cisco to provide free wifi and hardware at shelters and traditional housing facilities.

I have started working for ShelterTech since April 2020, where I started in the UX Research Team. I have done tons of user research and have interviewed 30+ homeless people, 10+ community representatives, and 10+ homeless shelter organizations. With my UX thinking, I developed the research outcomes to a usable product to help them solve their homelessness and eviction issues. In early 2022, I started to involve myself in the UX Design Team, where I helped developed the UI/UX of the site and made design needs, such as business cards and posters. I am responsible to keep on updating the UI/UX of the SFServiceGuide so the website can be updated based on the user’s needs, and also keep on researching on the needs of the people at risk of eviction and homeless to develop something useful for them.

Homelessness has always been #1 issue in the Bay Area. There is no end for this issue where this problem keeps on increasing each day. Shelters, food, hygiene, and health assistance are hard for them to obtain.

Not just that, but the issue of eviction is also often discovered in our society. Getting kicked out of the house by the government or experiencing the negative impact of the changes with the city's laws require you to seek help. That is the reason why ShelterTech exists.

THE PROBLEM STATEMENT

“My mental health is suffering because I can’t find a job, and I feel useless. However, I can’t get help because getting medical attention costs even more money.” 

(STATEMENT MADE BY AN INTERVIEWER)

Our goal is to make it easier for the people at risk of eviction and homelessness to seek help and find the resources that they need.

GOAL + HMW STATEMENT

How might we provide a thoughtful and and easy experience for the users to find help and suitable resources in a faster and simpler way?

Then we came up with our HMW statement:

DESIGN PRINCIPLES

USER RESEARCH

In Q1 2021, we interviewed 20+ people at risk of eviction and homelessness. From the interviews, gathered all the data and specified the data to Problem Synthesis, Users Overview, and Problem Spaces. Then, we further gathered data from Problem Spaces by affinity mapping. We divided the problem spaces into 6 problems, such as Housing, Jobs, Finances, Mental Health + Physical Health, Transportation, and Information.

During most interviews, we also asked about some of their preferences for them to obtain their needs, such as communication, job hunting, assistance, and about the way they want to receive information from us and other organizations. This data helps us to adjust the way we construct the information that can fulfill their necessities faster and more easily.

USER PERSONA

After the User Research Process, we decided to make 2 User Personas to give a clear view of ‘who’ our users are.

USER JOURNEY

Furthermore, we also think that a User Journey is needed to give us a defined goal for our users.

Moreover, we constantly distribute a survey to make sure and improve the positive impact with the use of SFServiceGuide for the users. Some of the questions are asking how often they use the site, what kind of services that they use, and questions about the useful features.

DESIGNS

CONCLUSIONS + REFLECTIONS

  • I want to thank the ShelterTech UX Design and Research Team for together solving one of the biggest issues in the Bay Area by using our Design Thinking to solve this problem. Not just that I help ShelterTech to achieve its mission, I learnt a lot from the projects that I am involved in this organization. I can gain a lot of UI and UX skills with the help of my teammates.

  • As for the challenges, meeting and talking to a lot of homeless people can be hard. So many of them have mental difficulties that make it hard for them to communicate their feelings and needs. Thus, I have learnt how to be cautious and respectful in interviewing users as well as constructing the research questions so that it will not offend the users.

  • This project is continuously going on and there are some materials that are re-used, such as User Persona and User Journey.