Co-design of a mobile service creating a supportive community for a vulnerable and marginalised group: The homeless in London

Co-design of a mobile service creating a supportive community for a vulnerable and marginalised group: The homeless in London

Kwon, O.

Stappers, P.J. (mentor)
Van Boeijen, B. (mentor)
Brayne, W. (mentor)
Di Maria, V. (mentor)

Industrial Design Engineering

Industrial Design

Design for Interaction

2011-10-18

This report documents the thesis project co-designing a mobile service that creates a supportive on-line community for the homeless in London. The project was performed from March to November 2011, six months in London for developing the service and two months in Delft for reflecting on the activities and writing. The thesis project was hosted by the self-funded organisation Homeless SMS founded by Will Brayne. Homeless SMS provided the initial concept of the service, which is transferring relevance information via SMS to the homeless. Numerous individuals and organisations are formally and informally engaged in the project. Their contributions are defined as mentors, partners, advisors and participants. The design activity put great attention on bringing a vulnerable and marginalised user group into the design process. Ethnographic research performed to understand the context and to establish contacts with the participants. As the outcome of the research, the purpose of service-system was evolved as the communication tool between the homeless, service providers, volunteers and former homeless, which will form the supportive on-line community. The design process involved relevant stakeholders of the service-system such as homeless people, service providers and volunteers. They contributed to the design decision through participating in workshops and prototype services. The prototyping was carried through three iterations with more than 30 homeless participants. Possible technological solutions were investigated and evaluated. In the third prototype, the high fidelity service was built on Twitter with more than 25 homeless users and the service was implemented at a homeless day centre in London. As a result, the thesis suggests a service system of sustainable supportive community for the homeless and a guidebook implement the service for other organisations.

service design
social media
participatory design
marginalised user group
homeless
mobile telephony

http://resolver.tudelft.nl/uuid:084e6bca-899e-4b76-b953-596fe411be5b

Campus only

Student theses

master thesis

(c) 2011 Kwon, O.