HomieOut Final Reflection

Reflection on the Design Process

Overall working on HomieOut was an eye opening experience. Being able to attack such a big social impact problem such as homelessness felt overwhelming at first, but as we went through each step we were able to identify some ideas and solutions that are actually feasible. As a group we feel pretty happy with the idea and how the prototype turned out. I wish we had worked on the secondary persona flow which was for the homeless person itself, and how they would go about setting up their profile and how they would be able to access the funds. During our research stages we found information around homeless people having government issued phones which they can then use hotspots to get wifi. But, I wonder how many percent of homeless people actually have phones, because that would be the tricky part to solve.

Another aspect we would need to think about is marketing and how we would get the word out for the app itself, not only will we need to market to the donors but also the people itself to create profiles and verify that they need the money as well. We would need the app to build trust with both personas to feel safe enough to sign up and write their story along with being able to donate via the app.

For next steps, I’d definitely like to do some quick gorilla testing and see how people interact with the overall experience and if they think it attacks the problem of providing a safe environment to donate to the homeless.

Overall ideation and prototyping taught me many great skills from creating physical prototypes with reusable materials, and using films, comics and digital design as inspiration to come up with all types of ideas. Along with knowing how to story tell and really create beautiful storyboards which I can easily take into my UX design career which will help me excel to be a better designer and storyteller.

My favorite project was creating an animal out of trash, it’s helped me view my trash in a whole new light and I’m excited to see what other prototypes I can come up with. I also enjoyed and value learning about comic books, I myself am a Archie Comics lover and collector, so this just brought a whole new light into how comics are created and written. I’ve truly enjoyed the last couple of months and all the fun projects I’ve gotten to create and learn from.