Problem and Solution
It is estimated that over 50% of homeless people are unemployed, usually causing them to fall into a cycle of chronic homelessness. Although a striking majority of homeless people want to get back on their feet and become employed, the negative stigma surrounding homelessness destroys their confidence and aspirations, and without confidence, the other hurdles that homeless people face while trying to become employed are impossible to overcome. Due to the lack of a proper support system to keep encouraging them, homeless people struggle to find a way to stay confident while trying to get themselves out of their situation. Our challenge is to create a design solution that instills confidence in homeless people trying to get out of a particular situation and find employment.
Our solution involves a touch screen monitor in a public library, an important location and resource for homeless people, with SMS text messaging capabilities. Our design aims to help with homeless people’s lack of confidence by allowing them to read success stories of other employed and previously homeless people, letting them know that there are people with similar backgrounds that have succeeded in getting back on their feet; our design allows these users to save the story for later reading by sending the story to their phone via SMS or to their email. Our design also allows for homeless people struggling to gain confidence while looking for jobs to become connected with mentors that have gone through similar experiences by receiving contact information of mentors willing to help.
