#charlotteterrien

All of the subtle ways our online lives and our romantic lives are hopelessly entangled, in animated GIFs.

Design Strategy at Samsung Electronics: becoming a top tier company by HBS Publishing

And here it ends (or for now at least!). We presented our final concepts to a few guests yesterday and our primary client, Marvin, was overly pleased. Our four concepts were: - an identification system for homeless people, preferably an RFID bracelet to avoid loss (this would enable access to all services including food, clothing, shelter, transportation...) - a shared information data system between all organizations (non profit, congregational and governmental) - a digital interface available at bus stops mostly which would give information (such as directions) about available services in the city - a housing first model (which is what Marvin had been trying to push) This was the first project where I worked with a client towards a common goal and I think we met enough times during the quarter to come up with meaningful propositions. We were able to propose solutions that improve the experience holistically and I think clients learned about our process and will apply some of our way of thinking to future projects. One of our guests even asked for an intern to help her out during the summer and start making the projects a reality! It is pretty exciting to be part of such a wicked problem and know that our work might actually be used for a better city. I hope we will keep in touch with our guests and follow up with the building process of all this!

Last thursday we went to meet Carlos, one of the manager of the Chatham Savannah Homeless Authority. He showed us around the building so we could understand the process a person in need might take when getting in touch with this organization. The location of the building is right off Liberty street which is great because people can easily walk there so no special transportation is needed. The initial step a person might take is a call before coming, then they have to fill in initial paperwork which will lead them to a waiting room. They are eventually greeted by a person who will try to understand their problems and guide them to a case manager who will be their guide from there on.  We met with a person who helps people apply to jobs, make resumes, find an outfit and leave their stuff in a secure place for interviews. I thought that was great because it helps people feel like they are not homeless for a few hours at least which can boost their confidence for an interview and eventually help them get a job to get their lives back on track. We also talked to a second person who is in charge of homeless count in the area. She gathers monthly counts from different organizations, unduplicates names that have been entered several times (because they came in several times in the month) and finally unduplicate names through different organizations. We were quite amazed by her work and thought it was such a tedious and time consuming job when a simpler shared data system could be used. Then, we headed over to the Oasis which was great and I'm glad we took the time to go. The woman who gave us the tour was so enthusiastic about everything they offered and it felt great to know that such a positive environment is available. The oasis provides showers, lockers and laundry system as well as food services and donations such as clothes and blankets. It also has a daycare room to take care of children who's parents need to go to appointments during the day. Overall, I think it was a good field trip but I wish it would have been earlier in the quarter. We understood the process more in depth and it was to put visuals on everything we had been hearing about!  

I came across this article last week and thought it was pretty cool! It is about a restaurant that is several floors up a building and instead of having people come to get their food and interact with the employees, the food is delivered to customers standing in the street looking down. Employees attach grilled cheese sandwiches to mini parachutes and let them fall out through the window. It caught my eye because it obviously is a different way of receiving food but it also creates a fun environment as people try to catch their sandwiches and I'm guessing there is no real order of who gets their food first. I thought that to push this fun environment and add an element if surprise, employees could even perhaps make different meals or different types of sandwiches and people would not know what they are getting. They could then either accept what they got or trade with another customer to satisfy likes and create spontaneous relationships. This restaurant is in Melbourne right now and planning on having a spot in NYC too. I wonder how popular this spot will be and if the founders will expand in other cities. I think this is a great fast food experience and even though the article states that the founders are not planning on doing this forever although I think it could evolve in a cool business chain with a more evolved product. The best way to see where it should go would be to experiment different things in different cities to do market research and know people's preferences!

I did a bit of research on how homeless people affect non homeless people and how they interact. I basically created a survey and collected answers from citizens of Savannah (mainly around Forsyth park - as I noticed it was a regular spot for the homeless) and also went to some shops (coffee shops and grocery shops) around that area to interview employees. Some of the insights I found are the following: - most of the people interviewed see homeless people in Savannah several times a week and the rest say they see them at least once a day.  - most of the people I interviewed said that when they interact with a homeless, they do not give money. Even though the homeless usually asks for money, the other person usually gives food if they have but if they don't they tend to ignore the homeless. - about one third of the interviewees said they were scared when a homeless approached them, because not knowing if they were in their right mind or if they would steal or be aggressive for poor reasons. The other two thirds said they weren't scared but were never sure how the homeless were going to act. - most people said they would like to help if they could but did not have the time to get involved in something and felt bad when they saw them. - most interviewees said they did not believe what homeless people were saying/stories they would tell because they thought the the homeless would always exaggerate to try and take advantage.  Overall, I think most non homeless people here do not know how to deal with homeless people because their actions can be so unexpected. I also think that there is a lack of knowledge of organizations that can help the homeless in the community or little actions that can be done and that non-homeless should be more aware in order to help when they see homeless.

Our second co-creation happened last week and was great! This time, my classmates organized the session and I was a participant. We focused this session on two aspects- getting information about the current homeless people and some ideal solutions the organizations would like to see.  Here are a couple of facts from the first part of the session -for Chatham county, from the year 2012 - there were 4884 counted homeless bodies that year (that doesn't include the people who were not found and thus not counted as organizations literally visit homeless camps to count bodies. - about 65% of these homeless are men and the majority have a military background - there were actually 396 veterans and most of these were men. - most of the homeless did not finish high school although veterans have to have GED - the majority of these homeless are African American The sad thing is that I talked to a native Savannahian and she said that in 20 years there had been no improvement in city housing... She also stated that there was a lack of opportunities for single women who are homeless. During the second part, we asked for ideal solutions, I was in group with Molly (my classmate) Marvin Heery (Chief Advocate at HIS Advocacy) and Cindy Kelley (Executive Director at Chatham-Savannah Authority for the Homeless). Cindy was great and gave us plenty of insights. She said the ideal system would be to have a personal service where homeless have individual and personalized attention but that is not possible because of lack of funding. She also told us there was an identification problem because most homeless have lost their IDs and they can only get one other one but none after that. They however do have a database called HMIS that they share nationwide with domestic violence organizations. However, churches do not participate in this database which brings a lack of accuracy. Also, other organizations may have different databases and are not willing to change because of the adaptation time it would take. All this creates a lack of cohesiveness... Cindy considers all that to bring Savannah's community 15 years behind other communities. To resume, the ideals for Cindy and Marvin would be to:  - provide enough housing on a housing first approach (following 100K homes) - convert shelters into homes to provide comfort and moral support  - have different home models to accommodate different needs (ie. one person home or family home) - coordinate services with non profits dealing with poor people, food, education in order to build communities and stability - provide education and prevention about budgets to reduce the amount of homeless people since most non-homeless are ignorant about the reason why homeless people lose their houses.