Category: Projects Spring 2017

App Prototype

Posted on by Olivia

This is the app prototype we developed.

It has a user friendly interface and offers basic features, for now, that centralise all services the club offers in one place.

Our attention is to at first really develop the ‘Events’ page and the ‘Transport’ page as these directly address our problem of transportation and attendance.

We hope to develop an accessible schedule that is full of events, such as basketball tournaments, that will attract kids into attending if they know what is going on at the club and when.

The second app is the transport app which will feature a system where a child can request a ride from their school up until 12noon the day of.

 

Presentation Day

Posted on by Olivia

After presenting to Camille, she was really excited about our ideas of providing a new transportation service in the form of a bus, and developing an app that places all of The Boys and Girls Club services in one place.

As well as excitement, she did provide hesitation at the cost and implementation difficultly of such proposed ideas. What we then proceeded to explain is that the goal is to prioritise. The bus purchase is something that can be first on the list, and they are relatively inexpensive to purchase second hand in the area.

We then explained that apps at first seem daunting because you think of the words ‘coding’ and ‘expensive’ but we explained that there is a lot of relatively inexpensive software that does the work for you. This is also something that can done more long term and doesn’t need to be started right away. Notre Dame students and volunteers can also be enlisted to help with identifying ways to do this.

Overall, we think our ideas and vision carried well, and we hope some, if not all, are implemented in the future!

Thank you, Camille!

Ethnographic Research

Posted on by Olivia

Individual Interview 1:

Anna, 14, St. Adam’s ‘Teen’

I asked Anna several questions regarding the Boys and Girls Club, and her knowledge of it. What we gathered from this interview is that she had no idea there was such a club and responded to my question of ‘so what do you think of the Boys and Girls Club’ with the answer “What’s that?”. This was interesting and provided us with a completely new insight which we hadn’t even considered – how many people know about it, as opposed to assuming everyone had heard of it in some capacity. More surprisingly is Anna is a South Bend native, her father drives past the club everyday and she has lived in South Bend her entire life – yet the club had never been brought to her attention.

 

Individual Interview 2:

Sam, 16, High school student and local cafe worker

Sam’s interview was insightful as it too provided a new, unthought of insight. He had a problem with the identification of the club, and the brand / views associated with it: “Boys and Girls Club sounds so young, like its for little kids or something.”. He identified that he wouldn’t attend the club because it sounded too like something for younger children, and wasn’t relevant to him or his friends. He said he expected little kids running around, not a place that him and his friends could ‘chill’ or ‘hang’. This was an unfortunate perspective because the club has really great facilities, especially the high quality indoor basketball court. When we made him aware of this he was surprised.

 

Expert Interview:

Camille, Club program leader

Our meeting with Camille highlighted the key problems she had witnessed from a staff members point of view. The two main areas that needed to be addressed were transportation and attendance. She stated that their isn’t a sufficient means of getting children from school to the club, ‘we used to have a bus that did an after school run to collect the kids, but we no longer have the bus. Now I just pick up what kids i can (usually 2-3 along with her children) and bring them here.” 

We expect that there is correlation between these two problems – insufficient transport services to the club has caused such a drop in attendance. We believe focusing on transportation will in turn help the attendance issue – at least significantly.

 

Immersion: Spend sometime at the club and immerse in the culture and activities.

To do this we visited the club from 5pm onwards and engaged in watching them play basketball, do their hw, and socialise with their friends. This offered insight into the types of activities that occurred at the club and what kids spent most of their time on.

 

Interactive: Pictures and Collage 

Whilst at the club, although we are unable to take pictures of the users, we were able to take pictures of the facilities and activities. From this we used them to create a college to come up with ideas on how to attract new users to build attendance.

We recognised some aspects captured really well and were the selling points of the club. The basketball court was one and the new Mac desktops were another. Both are great, new resources that are not offered at many other clubs, or homes.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Prototype Feedback

Posted on by Nicholas

In the prototyping stages, we waited for Pat’s input on our ideation summary to begin testing. Since Pat basically eliminated two of our ideas from possibility, we were able to focus our testing on the job board website. The group created some iPhone screen mock-ups for users to examine. Even though the main channel will be a typical computer with internet access, the iPhone screens gave us the opportunity to accentuate the main ideas of the job board. After visiting the Saint Joseph PACE Center and speaking with team family members, the group acquired some valuable feedback. Retiree Gayle Books, a former KFC employee and PACE participant, stated “I need a buddy like you there” while I was explaining who the users would meet up with to complete tasks. This pointed to a major oversight in the prototype: we had only allowed one user to help another single user. Adding options to combine the expertise of multiple users to tackle problems made sense in that complicated jobs could now be easier to complete and teamwork would lead to more social connectivity amongst users. One of the main things Professor Angst stressed is the E for Enticing, so the group tested which incentives were most coveted. Desired rewards seemed to fluctuate randomly. Cash rewards reigned supreme in the end, especially according to individuals with lower retirement savings. Thus, the job board should have an option for a cash reward on each posting. Lastly, ideally local stores and companies would be involved by offering discounts to products/services related to areas of expertise. PACE Activity Director Joe Collins pointed out the missed opportunities from these local stores possibly posting simple jobs, or even workshops, onto the job board. This would allow stores to get cheap, or even volunteer, labor while also increasing a sense of community for the users. Also, beginner style workshops could excite the users to develop skills in the hobbies they want to pursue.

 

Key Takeaways:

  1. To fix users’ weariness about meeting up with strangers looking for jobs, the website should offer a “buddy” system that allows friends to team up on tasks and split the rewards.
  2. Participating local stores should also be able to post smaller jobs and even workshops that inhibit connections between users in certain areas of expertise.
  3. Users, especially ones with lower retirement savings, prefer cash as an incentive to complete tasks.

 

iPhone Mock-up Pictures:

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Ethnography – Individual Interview with Kim Longan, CEO of Billing Dynamics

Posted on by Victoria

Ethnography Summary

Victoria Velasquez spoke over the phone with Kim Longan, the CEO of Kim’s Billing Dynamics in Moorpark, CA.

Date: 4/30/17

Type: Individual Interview 2

Location: Over the phone

Team participants: Victoria

 

User Characteristics: Kim Longan

Female, age early 50s

Owns a medical billing company in Southern California

Asks if applicants have been convicted of a crime on job applications

Is extremely generous and totally believes in second chances

Has a history of hiring individuals who live off of government assistance

Treats her employees like family

Will create a part-time employment opportunity for someone she feels deeply for and wants to help

Has had a number of bad experiences with former employees who were not ex-offenders

Is experiencing hard times in her business right now and wants to avoid any risks that could further disrupt her company’s performance

What is this person about – what drives him/her? Kim loves to give. She treats her employees extremely well by showering them with gifts and being very flexible with their personal and familial needs. She strives to make people happy.

What is this person’s biggest point of pain? Kim has a hard time saying no to people. She feels sorry for a lot of people and lets her guilt overcome her common sense and rationality.

Memorable quote from interview: “I give my employees keys to my business and my house. I wouldn’t feel comfortable giving that privilege to someone who has been convicted of a crime.” “I run a small business and I have been faced with expensive lawsuits by ex-employees that I fired. I don’t want to take that risk again.” “My employees are very close with my family and my three daughters. I wouldn’t want to put them in danger.”

 

Top 3 Learnings:

  1. Kim is a very generous person who tries to see the good in everything.
  2. She is very loyal to her current employees, her business, and her family. Her business decisions are driven by this.
  3. She is more inclined to offer employment to someone who has been affected by incarceration but not someone who themselves has been incarcerated.

Key Insight – (1) As an employer, she places a lot of trust in her employees and she isn’t sure she could do that with someone who has been previously convicted of a crime. (2) If her business was larger and harder to take down, she might be more open to giving ex-offenders a second chance.