Say Hi.

 

         

123 Street Avenue, City Town, 99999

(123) 555-6789

email@address.com

 

You can set your address, phone number, email and site description in the settings tab.
Link to read me page with more information.

A NEIGHBORHOOD FAVOR PLATFORM

background

Issue

American neighborhoods are segregated by race, class and culture. Even within these subgroups, neighbors tend to remain isolated, interacting little with one another.

Research qUESTION

Do Americans desire to form relationships with their neighbors? If so, what would be the essential qualities of a design that would successfully encourage neighbors to interact with one another?

Observations

  • Most people need support in their daily lives, but they often overlook their closest resource- their neighbors. 

  • Sharing a common background is often a prerequisite to the forming of social relationships, as easy to identify commonality is the basis for comfortable conversation between two parties. In contrast, sharing common background is often not essential when helping someone out with a favor. 

Proposal

  • Investigate the essential qualities of a design that would successfully enable neighbors to offer and receive help through reciprocating favors. 

  • Draft a series of design scenarios and concepts that embody those essential qualities. 

 

Research

Probe

Overview

I began my research by scoping out the current landscape of platforms that connect communities with services. By way of Competitive Analysis, I was able to identify design conventions characteristic of this space. 

Leveraging these design conventions, I designed a series of neighborhood network concepts to act as probes during the interviews. One of the primary benefits of these probes was their ability to elicit from my subjects the essential design qualities that such a network would have to have in order to win over their usership. 

The qualities that were most often deemed essential by participants were safety and inclusivity. 

Therefore, the following insights and concepts focus on how these qualities can be realized in a neighborhood network.

image_3.jpg
 

Insights

image_3.jpg

Oversight has the power to prevent criminal activity from occurring, because people are
more considerate of their behavior when they know there is supervision.

 
image_4-02.jpg

Neighbors that know each other, look out for one another. And being looked out for
is a more inclusive feeling than being watched.

 

To ensure the inclusivity of lower to upper class neighbors, the digital platform should be
accessible by various telecommunication channels.

 

Sample Scenario

storyboard.jpg
 

Next Steps

  • Build out an interactive, lo-fi platform that focuses on one favor type and integrates concepts for oversight and inclusivity.
  • Launch the interactive system among 15 subjects for a period of two months.
  • Throughout the two-month period, regularly elicit your subjects’ feelings toward the system by means of diary studies, interviews and focus groups.
  • Identify the successes and flaws of the current iteration.
  • Evaluate the bylaws created by the formed groups in order to deduce what the default level of oversight should be for the favor type under consideration.
  • Based on the insights from the two-month study, design a new iteration to be launched among a new set of subjects.
  • Repeat this process until the system can be confidently launched community-wide.