Attached is our business Canvas
Category: Projects Spring 2017
Ethnography- Interactive collage
Expert Interview with Peter Lombardo (Director of Community Learning at Center for the Homeless)
We received feedback on our recommendation from Peter Lombardo, the Director of Community Learning at the Center for the Homeless.
Date: May 2, 2017
Location: LaFortune, University of Notre Dame
Team Participants: Matt McCormick, Paul Cepak, Sarah Riehl, and Yuwei Tu
Takeaways:
- Housing First will require rent, but guests can receive grants
- Toochi is a synthetic marijuana that as become common in South Bend
- Center for Homeless doesn’t allow current drug users, so it will refer them to Life Treatment Center, which has residential options for patients
Recommendations:
- Peter recommends having 2 professional counselors at Housing First, along with interns (possibly from ND’s Psychology Masters and PhD students)
- 2 Steps: Identify those who will stay at Housing First, then connect the appropriate social worker to them
- Prioritize the mentally ill at Housing First, because they are often targeted and taken advantage of on the streets
Ethnography- Individual 2
Ethnography Summary
Stephen Muldoon interviewed client of AIDS Ministries
Date: 3/7/17
Type: Interview
Location: LaFun
Team participants: Conducted interview over phone with group
User Characteristics:
Previously incarcerated individual with AIDS
Male, 20-30’s
Optimistic and in good spirits; young and vibrant
What is this person’s biggest point of pain? Similar to the other individual, this man currently facing trouble finding a job and housing due to previous history. Medication for his AIDS is not supported by the government past prison and AIDS Ministries can only support past 2 months; he is also on house arrest. However, this younger man has the support of his family and thus has a place to stay with financial support.
Memorable quote from interview: “My family definitely helps, if I didn’t have them I would be homeless or probably dead. Staying clean is my main focus at the moment.”
Top 3 Learnings:
- Most of the people stricken with AIDS within the community get it from dirty needles
- No consistent help from outside; family a necessity
- Economic backgrounds of these individuals is a decisive factor between life and death
Key Insight – (1) Individual not really concerned with the future (2) Having the family completely changed the man’s outlook on his on life (3) Might not understand the gravity of his situation yet, in particular with the AIDS virus
Call with Brady August from Youth Service Bureau Street Outreach
On Monday May 1, Parker interviewed Brady August for half an hour about the Youth Bureau Street Outreach team. We discussed the origin of the street outreach program, its mission, personnel, training, financial and non-financial resources, and traction in the community. August was very excited about the FUSE program and the housing-first initiative, but he identified a clear disconnect between developing the housing and actually getting the necessary people into the apartments. August provided further evidence that there is a need to locate and prioritize who should be in the housing first.
Second Call with Pat
In the second call with our client Pat Karen on Tuesday, April 25, we proposed our three product ideas in the form of our ideation summary. We went into the call believing our smartwatch was the best idea and an idea that could incorporate the other applications into it, but Pat almost immediately shot it down due to the intense popularity and established competitors in the market (Apple Watch, Fitbit). He did admire the need for the physician to prescribe the watch since the older population is resistant to commands. Our second idea, the schedule, was too close to a service like Google calendars, and Pat believed that it would not meet the needs of our target user. He had little more to say about the schedule, so we all though the phone call was a train-wreck. Fortunately, the online job board/job sharing service intrigued Pat the most. This surprised the group initially, but after talking it over it made sense to pivot away from the watch. He agreed with us that the product could fulfill the social needs of the user while also providing constant engagement, both physical and mental. Our initial worry was that the job board would only be accessible through internet friendly devices such as tablets and laptops that may not be easy to get a hold of, but Pat insisted that the job board should be available through all internet platforms. This phone call gave us a clear product choice from the client’s perspective to focus on.
Key Takeways:
- The smartwatch market is cluttered with products in development and huge competitors like the Apple Watch. Even though the wearable was initially our most promising idea, we have to pivot away from it.
- The job sharing service could actually succeed as a solution to some of the needs of our user, specifically social interaction and constant engagement with activities familiar to the user.
- The main thing to focus on in the prototyping stage is the incentives. While we have an idea for a rewards system, it is key to flesh out which ones users actually prefer.
Ethnography- Individual interview 1
Ethnography Summary
Stephen Muldoon interviewed client of AIDS Ministries
Date: 3/7/17
Type: Interview
Location: Lafun
Team participants: Conducted interview over phone with group
User Characteristics:
Previously incarcerated individual with AIDS
Male, 30-40’s
Very sullen and depressed individual
What is this person’s biggest point of pain? Currently facing trouble finding a job and housing due to previous history. Medication for his AIDS is not supported by the government past prison and AIDS Ministries can only support past 2 months. He struggles most with what he is going to do wit his life.
Memorable quote from interview: “I’ve been stigmatized my whole life. It is what it is man. But with it [criminal record], I can’t get no job or no place to live. I feel like I have to live my life alone.”
Top 3 Learnings:
- Aids ministries and organizations alike only can provide medication and housing for a limited time; there are no permanent solutions.
- Different crimes can change the degree of which these people may live their lives
- The cause of the vicious cycle stems from the difficulty these people face with trying to leave it
Key Insight – (1) A support system can make it or break peoples lives that are afflicted by this disease and background (2) There is almost a systematic discrimination against these people to try and live better lives (3) There is almost an incentive to go back to prison as so much is taken away from these people
Business Model Canvas
| Key Partners
-Teachers -Counselors -Faculty |
Key Activities
-Assign students to a cluster -Assign a teacher/faculty to each group -Assign student leaders -Carry out program -Revise and improve program every year |
Value Propositions
-Integrate freshman into the school -Increase school pride -Allow students opportunities to lead -Increase student involvement in Clay -Inform students about activities and happenings at Clay -Give students more of a voice in how the school runs |
Customer Relationships
-Feedback loop from students -Surveys and meetings throughout |
Customer Segments
-Potential incoming students -Transfers and new students -Existing Clay students |
| Key Resources
-Classroom time for groups to meet -Software to track or manage the program -Apparel/wristbands to help identify groups -Teacher/faculty supervisor |
Channels
-First day, meet clusters -Weekly meetings (homeroom) -Email blast to leaders with agenda for each meeting |
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| Cost Structure
-Salary for counselor/program leader -Extra pay to teachers that support the program |
Revenue Streams
-Increased enrollment due to competitive advantage |
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Gallery Day Feedback
Gallery day was very helpful in receiving feedback on our ideas from those who are most involved in the Boys & Girls Club. They had several comments on how we could best expand our research and ideas to better address the problem at hand.
The first was that they were really intrigued by our research with kids from South Bend who responded that they had ‘never heard of’ the Boys and Girls Club. With this, they asked how we could best target them. It was suggested that the two best ways to do this would be via social media, as they are very active online, and to advertise at their schools.
Advertisements at school were ruled out because of the politics and lengthy process that accompanies trying to get something promotional in the schooling system.
Social media at first drew hesitations as their response was ‘we don’t have a marketing team, or the budget for one’. But after an explanation of you don’t actually have to have one, there will be simple posts from staff end, but most of the social activity will come from kids ‘sharing’ their times at the club when having fun, which is free advertising. This will initially come from the revised schedule seeing the introduction of more events and fun activities at the club, e.g. the basketball tournament.
The second piece of feedback we got was we had to explore the stakeholders and potential partners of the transportation issue. We addressed that something had to be done for transportation, and we recognised buying a bus would be the best thing to accommodate more children, however we were advised to look at the community. Do we want to buy a bus that is owned and operated by the Boys and Girls Club, do we want to partner with Transpo of South Bend to provide the service, etc?
Workarounds
This picture is actually a screenshot of a video, but here a boy, who does not have a running shower, needs to wash his hair. Equipped with just a bottle and a sink, he decides to fill a water bottle, strap it to his back and wash his hair by tipping forward over the sink and letting the water pour over his shampooed hair to wash it out.
With limited resources but needing to wash his hair, this is a very innovative concept that gets the job done!