“Solidareaty”, a solution to help the homeless. Part II.
Develop.
Prioritization Matrix
In order to prioritize ideas and develop the most viable one and the best in terms of impact, I used an Impact/Viability Matrix.
The winning idea was a web or app to donate primary goods to homeless people, but not an ordinary one. In fact, I wanted to create something different, to increase people’s involvement in this cause and to focus on the transparency and easiness of donations.
So, have you ever heard about “Suspended coffees” ? It’s simple. A customer pays for an extra coffee in a coffee shop and if someone who cannot afford to buy a hot drink comes in and asks for a ‘suspended coffee’ they get one of these pre-paid ones for free. I thought that this idea could be the added value I needed to boost solidarity among people and, why not, make the homeless happy through food.
People who want to help someone in need will be able to suspend a coffee in a café or restaurant, but also suspend a dish on the menu. They will also be able to donate food boxes and their own surplus food.
MoSCoW
By means of a MoSCoW technique, I decided which characteristics and functionalities must, should and could be present in my web and what I didn’t want to include in it.
Benchmarking
After deciding to focus on this idea, I also had to take into consideration my competitors, their services and their strengths and weaknesses. By means of a benchmarking, I evaluated 5 competitors and rated them according to a pre-determined set of criteria.
I found out that just one out of 5 offered the possibility to donate coffee, none of them had the option to donate a food box and just one of them had a section to read the stories of people in need. Anyway, the idea of suspended coffee or suspended meal was present just in one, that’s why I decided to focus on this concept and differentiate my offer including more services (like the food box or the donation of surplus food).
Sitemap and Flowchart
To set the structure of the web and organize its content I created a sitemap using Octopus and a flowchart of the donation process using Whimsical.
Value Proposition and Business Model
Then, I developed a value proposition and a business model. My product, a web to donate food to homeless people, will generate the following benefits:
- Homeless people won’t have to desperately look for food, since someone will pay for it in advance.
- There will be more social awareness about homeless’ stories and life conditions, thanks to the section “Stories” in the web. More information, less prejudices.
- Donations will be transparent, easy and direct. People will know perfectly who they are giving their money to.
- People will be able to help people in need and be part of a volunteer program.
- Homeless people will feel part of society, restoring trust and confidence in it.
Deliver.
Wireframing
Finally, I could outline the layout of my web and draw some wireframes in Whimsical.
Style Guides
I also created some style guides to define typography and colors. I chose “Raleway” for the font, because of its legibility and elegance and orange and green as primary colors. I associate green to hope and new beginnings and orange to action, union and positivity.
High Fidelity
I used Figma to create the Hi-Fi prototype and here below you can see the final result.
As you can see in the video, the Home offers an overview of the donations you can make: suspend a coffee, suspend a meal, donate a food box or donate your own surplus food.
The second webpage is about suspended coffees and explains the process to donate a coffee to a person in need.
The third one is about the partners of “Solidareaty”: cafés, restaurants, supermarkets and volunteers.
The fourth one tells more about the values of the association and why “it exits”.
Conclusions
This time, I was alone during the Design Thinking process. These two weeks have been exciting and challenging. I started with an idea in my mind and ended up with a different one. In fact, research made me understand the real needs of homeless people and, at the same time, the needs of people who want to help them. So, I tried to combine the two in my final idea.
I learned how to adapt to time restrictions, to organize my work being alone, to choose the most useful techniques to detect insights and be as emphatic as I could.
In the future, I would like to implement the “Stories” and “Profile” sections and it would be interesting to prototype an App too. Finally, I would like to test my prototype in order to validate the idea and iterate it, if necessary.
Although this idea may seem focused more on humanity than on business, I decided to follow a user centered design process and really put myself in the users’ shoes for a better understanding of this huge social issue. Of course, it would be interesting to develop a more profitable business model, so that the idea can be more realistic and workable.
Thank you for reading me!
