Social Service Resources Map for the Homeless

length: 3.5 months

Problem

There are many social services in Bloomington working on helping the people that are homeless to meet their basic needs. Different social services have different requirements, orientations and operating hours. They are also situated in different locations of the town. Therefore, the process of matching the people that are homeless to the appropriate agency is usually a hectic procedure for the service referral agencies, such as the 2-1-1 call referral center and Shalom Community Center.

 

Research

We conducted interviews and contextual inquiry at the 2-1-1 referral center and several other local social services to learn the homeless's needs and how the services are helping them to meet their basic living needs.

 

Insights

In the research, we found that the social workers at the service referral agencies need to consider multiple factors such as service orientations, eligibility requirements, location, hours, transportation option etc. to recommend a suitable service to the homeless. The current interface lists most of the criteria in paragraph. From the interviews with the social workers, we learned that a good interface that helps the social workers to visualize information could help them to make better recommendations. We did more ethnographic study to compile a list of criteria that the homeless most concern about, and take the list to optimize the interface.

 

Design

Taking the list of social services' criteria, we applied visualization technique to explore different representations of data. After a few iterations in low-fidelity prototypes, we created a working interactive map of the local social services to test with social workers in 2-1-1 call center and the Shalom Community Center. The working prototype is available here.