Problem

Homeless, low-income, and anyone who needs low-budget resources (shelters, food pantries, and bathrooms) in one place they need to help ease and survive the day.

Solution

The waiting for you app is created for anyone who needs to find a place to spend a night. Features include a Map of resources near you: shelters, food pantries, and bathrooms.

1- Finding availability in shelters.

2- People want to get affordable places to stay.

3-Get free access to restrooms.

Metrics

It was creating a shelter listings tool for users. 100% of users interviewed to use this listing tool felt it was easy and helpful. 85% of users were able to complete the tasks without problems.

Discover

User Insights

After interviewing five users, I was able to confirm that the main pain points that users were facing when listing shelters were:

• *They spent too much time filling in information for signing in.

• Some addresses in the searching process are unclear and do not have assistance.

Besides, I found some interesting behaviors from the users:

• Most users get confused by the address, especially people out of Seattle.

• Users are eager to know more about the shelter location and what it looks and the History of the shelter.

With this information, I wanted to keep in mind to prioritize designing an easy-to-use signing-in and smooth listing flow for users. I wanted to design to reduce the cognitive load and improve the shelter's locations-listing completion rate.

Define

Personas

With the findings from the user research, I crafted two user personas: one is "Low-income backpacker"; the other is "Shelter user." The Shelter user would focus on exploring the listing efficiently; the Low-income backpacker might need assistance getting started.

Problem Statements

Based on the research, the problems are further defined as follows:

• How might we make the address search easier?

• How might we support users to pick the services quicker?

User Flow

I created a user flow to illustrate how users would go through the platform to address search.

Ideate

The layout of the home page - 2 sections

I divided the home page into a detailed map, quick access to help, and a questions bank. In the other section, I separated services to give the user-specified service locations.

Sequence

I switched the "The Map" option before the "the divided location services " section. To avoid scrolling up and down, I put the map button at the beginning of the home page. To provide the user with colors to show the difference between every service according to his location and help him to prioritize the next destination or ask for assistance from the hotline button.

Let’s look at the “Search for address” layouts

1- We have prepared separate services for some users who need to find quick places. Instead of listing all the tips in the uploading form, I gave a link to let users refer to. This is because not all users need it, and the guideline includes many details that would make the uploading page lengthy.

2- The user will select the service (Shelter); then the app will offer some nearby locations, and the user chooses the nearest shelter; the user can go directly to it or call them to ask if they have available slots.

3-To ensure the user knows more about the shelter, I linked the location with the Google link so the user can check the reviews or look at the photos on Google.

4- There would be a cancel button at the upper left corner of each address search. I designed this for users so they can easily remove the pages they are unsatisfied with.

Validate

Once my high-fidelity prototype was complete, it was time to put them to the test. The participants were instructed to complete the "Address search" task. The result shows that:

• 85% of users were able to complete the tasks without problems.

• 100% of users interviewed to use this listing tool felt it was accessible and useful.

  On the other hand, there is room for improvement,

1- The users need to provide more info about the shelter address. So I linked the location with the Google link.

2- The users need to find chat boxes and question bank at the beginning of the homepage. To solve this issue, I rotated the structure.

3- Has trouble finding where to find Account profile. I made sure it appeared on the right side of the home page and the menu.

Waiting for you- homeless resources initiative app- Hi-fi prototype

Wrap Up

I would like to look into the address search process and forum section for future improvement. We may provide clearer instructions to help users find the services they need. Also, we may provide users with more options for other services.

Thank you for reading.