HOMELESS APP CASE STUDY
The definition of homelessness means not having a home. This includes being homeless even if you have a roof over your head you are staying with family or friends, hostel, squatting, living in poor conditions that effect your health and also living on the streets.
Homelessness is a major issue across the world that continues to worsen as “For the last five years’ core homelessness has been rising year on year in England, reaching a peak just before the pandemic when the numbers of homeless households jumped from 207,600 in 2018 to over 219,000 at the end of 2019.” (Crisis, n.d). The number of homeless people are said to be higher many are not reported and therefore not accounted for in these numbers.
INTRODUCTION
COVID-19 has seen an increase of people finding themselves homeless and an even “bigger increase from people who are experiencing homelessness for the first time” (Boobis, S. and Albanese, F, 2020). COVID-19 forced the local authorities to step up with the increase to house people with many of homeless people living in COVID-19 unsafe environments however some people were left with nowhere to turn and needed up on the steers with no help but a sleeping bag after issues with hostel arrangements.
Brief
I am going to create an app that aims to eliminate pressures associated with homelessness. I will propose a user journey that supports and educates user’s on relevant material that can help a homeless person successfully integrate into a local community. In this project I will be playing the role of a user experience researcher and a product designer.
With mental illness leading to suicide, and this being the “second most common cause of death among people who are homeless in England and Wales” (Samaritans, 2018), mental health is a big problem that needs to be addressed and solved and I will aim to tackle this in this project.
I will design an app that will tackle the issue of mental health amongst homeless people with the intention that this app will be an aid to strengthening the mind set of homeless people, giving them a new perspective and mindset that will help them integrate successfully back into society. To solve the lack of access that homeless people have to mental health, I will be designing an app that focuses on monitoring their mental state and tools to help them have a positive mind set. The app will also include a plan that each person can work towards catered specifically to people on the journey of integrating back into society.
By creating this app I will be giving homeless people a means to face any mental illness they may have and/or stay on top of having a healthy mind. Overall this should reduce the rate of suicide amongst homeless people as they will have more hope and help through this app.
Problem Statement
Homelessness Figures
WIREFRAMING PHASE
Low-Fidelity Wireframe:
Doing low-fidelity wireframes allows me to focus on the bigger picture of the design without getting side-tracked by design elements such as colours and images. I have decided to do these on Figma which if I was working within a team, would be accessible to them. This would allow me to share my final low-fid wireframe with them team gather feedback at an early stage. Doing a low-fid wireframe also allows me to take it forward to the CEOs and Stakeholders to show and ensure that I am solving the identified problem for the user.
Low-Fid Wireframe (Home)
Low-Fid Wireframe (Wellbeing)
Low-Fid Wireframe (Mood Diary)
Mid-Fidelity Wireframe:
I have created the mid-fid wireframes that will be more detailed and realistic to what the final design will look like. I will be adding in my icons at this stage which will give more understanding for some aesthetic details and how they could merge with essential functionalities of the app.
Mid-Fid Wireframe (Home)
Mid-Fid Wireframe (Wellbeing)
Mid-Fid Wireframe (Mood Diary)
High-Fidelity Wireframe:
In the last stage of wireframing, high-fidelity design, I have brought in Miller’s law and grouped the menu options on the wellbeing menu list. I have chunked the two diary’s together, grouped meditation and affirmations which both come under mindset together and the last two that I have chunked together will lead the user to external links. By doing this, the page becomes more manageable to the user and is not an overload of information at once. As you can see I have also changed the mood diary to have one question that will be a summary of their overall mood. I have then added a notes box for them to document how they are feeling and their thoughts on the same page instead of a different page as I originally had planned. I decided to do this as the research I have done for other apps have this same idea. My decision of doing so is supported by Jacobs law which shows that users prefer sites/apps to work in the same way as other sites/apps they know. I have decided to use a slide function to answer the mood as it allows the user to pick between different moods if desired.
High-Fid Wireframe (Home)
High-Fid Wireframe (Wellbeing)
High-Fid Wireframe (Mood Diary)
I made the decision to change the home page so that the UI is consistent throughout the app, so instead of having square buttons I have decided to go for rectangular buttons which matches the aesthetics of the app as a whole.
I made the decision to change the home page so that the UI is consistent throughout the app, so instead of having square buttons I have decided to go for rectangular buttons which matches the aesthetics of the app as a whole.
Style Guide
With knowledge of the psychology of colour, the main colour of my app will be blue which evokes calmness, inspiration and confidence. The other colours I have chosen evokes optimism, a fresh start and security.
I used the 60:30:10 rule to give balance to the app and to make sure that there is not an overload of colour. It will also help the company with future designing as they will always have this rule with the colours and how to utilise them.
UI PHASE
RESEARCH PHASE
Business research:
I conducted a red route analysis to target the essential features that would be most helpful and used the most by the user. This will benefit my process as I will be able to assess what is important to the user on their journey within the app to know what features to prioritise. By doing a Red Route Analysis I will be able to design an app that will optimise product features that deliver the most value to the users of the app and drive the key metrics.
After the research I have conducted into the user, I have created three user persona’s that will help making sure that that the app will cater to all people who need the app.
Red Route Analysis:
User Persona's:
IDEATION
Mind Mapping:
The first ideation technique I have chosen to do is mind mapping to allow me visually see the pain points and thoughts and ideas of combatting them. For this process I will be using whimsical.com as it is a great platform to use individually but if I was working with a team it would also be great for collaborating. This would allow team members to access and contribute to the mind map, allowing the whole teams’ ideas to be in one place.
This ideation technique will impact my UX decision making as I will be able to see all my problems and possible solutions in one place. It will allow me to play with these problem-solving ideas I have come up with and allow me to think about the solutions to these problems in my next ideation technique.
Mind Map of Pain Points Homeless people face and solution ideas
From my mind map I can see that mental health and mind set is problem with people who are homeless. I am also able to empathise and understand that a lot of pain points come down to lack of knowledge of services/locations that will be of aid to them. With this I will be focusing on designing an app that will be focusing on providing a list of services that are local to them and also ways to support their mental health and change/improve their mind set.
Crazy 8's:
With my findings from my first ideation technique of mind mapping, I will now be moving onto my second ideation technique which will be Crazy 8’s. The process of the technique involves sketching eight quick ideas in eight minutes focusing on the design of the UI. This is a great technique to do alone, involve a design team in or even engage stakeholders who do not have a design background.
This ideation technique allows me to design freely without technical restriction and focus on getting all my design ideas down and getting my creative juices to flow freely. Being left with eight different designs done in a short amount of time also gives me a variety of options to take onto the next stage. I will be carrying out this technique in InVision.
This ideation technique has given me many different design ideas however there is not just one design from this technique that I will go on to develop as some functions that some have, others are lacking. I have therefore decided to take and mix a combination of the best aesthetics and functions together to take onto the next stage of building the wireframes of the app which will start with the low-fidelity sketches which I will carry out in Figma.
Landing Page Crazy 8's
Wellbeing Page Crazy 8's
Competitor Analysis
High-Fidelity Wireframe:
Final UI Design (Mood Diary Slider)
Final UI Design (Home)
Final UI Design (Wellbeing)
Final UI Design (Home)
I created a prototype on figma for my final UI design. This would be good to use for us. Test it out here.
After doing my design I went through the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) to make sure that the landing page I had designed is accessible and inclusive. Ensuring a website meets the WCAG requirements will allow it to be more accessible for people with disabilities.
I have checked all of my colour contrasts throughout the app to make sure all the text is legible and also that the CTA’s are clear for people that may be colourblind, which is approximately 300 million people worldwide. All the CTA’s are at least 44px wide which is the minimum touch area for tapping controls. I had to make the drop down on the mood diary area larger as the CTA was too small with hardly any space around them.
WCAG:
Overall, the design process for this app was different as it was build from scratch and not a redesign. This was interesting and fun to explore and build the design from the floor up. The most difficult obstacle was the research part as most of the research I have is secondary so putting all of these into charts was more difficult.
I believe that app will be an amazing help to people. The problem of lack of access to mental health care has been solved in this app I have created which allows the user to stay on top of their mental health, track it and also reach out if they feel they more help beyond an app. This allows the user to integrate back into society as it helps their mindset and gives them a plan so they can see progress step by step which is proven to encourage people.
To validate my hypothesis, I would conduct explorative usability testing wth a group of participants. This would test the users journey within the app, the tools that the app provides and will have the participants answer some well thought real-life questions and scenarios.
If I had more time on this case study, I would love to develop the app and create the other pages. It is an app I believe will be essential to homeless people looking to integrate back into society and also for homeless people in general to stay on top of their mental health and hopefully in time reduce the rate of suicide amongst homeless people.