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This project was initiated as the city problem awareness to overcome with the overwhelming population of the homeless people. The project commenced by the environmental scanning of the Taipei city which was trying to find issues related to the building development that ended up into an abandoned spaces of underpass in almost intersection in the city center. Therefore, the preliminary idea was set into making some improvement of the non-space of underpass into a public shelter to accommodate homeless people some living necessities. After several revisions this project is narrowed down the focus in making a smart mobile shelter service with some upfamous technology support in providing better emergency situations as well as educate the homeless to be more productive.
Research background
There are two focuses of the research claimed in this project as the space and the homeless people in the city.
Abandoned Space: There are particularly three main issues risen in the scope of space / area, the following item will itemize the impact background:
Homeless People: Another three issues are encountered from the homeless on embracing the regulation and homeless behavior in the city.
Research Objectives
In this project we ascertain some objectives to ensure the project workflow can be utilized and provide a proper guidance when it will be developed in the further studies. Hence this project also distinguished three main objectives as following statement.
Research methods with an architectural design scenario
This project is utilizing two types of analyses to define the user’s problem as well as the user’s demands related. in order to pursue the main goal of providing better concept of smart mobile shelter.
Moreover, the detailed scenario and process can also be seen through the side diagram.
Sensory walk analysis
The sensory walk analysis was done to observe the homeless behavior in the real situations, as well as their interaction towards the space. we were taking the Longshan temple area in Taipei city where mostly homeless people are located. The project summarized the result as the following data.
Space:
People:
Activity:
Twitter Scraping – Voice of the city
In making the attitudinal data collection, we utilized a MAXQDA software to scrap some thoughts of the people over the Twitter as one of the biggest social media platforms with using keywords: “Shelter,” “Homeless.” The result can be seen over the link below.
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/11U8nrEsixEcyO_t8qk6GS2ju_k_aZAFz/edit? usp=sharing&ouid=118415902476623078256&rtpof=true&sd=true
Therefore, we found out some basic knowledges on understanding the user needs, popular homeless issues and current innovative solution on the internet as the following table.
| User needs | Rising Issues | Innovative Solutions |
|---|---|---|
| 1. Meals |
| Actors (A) | Needs (N) |
|---|---|
| Homeless people | |
| • Homeless by condition | |
| • Homeless by choice | Better life quality that satisfies the needs of equality in human-rights. |
| • Daily necessities. | |
| • Basic living standard. | |
| • Better personal society. | |
| Government | |
| • Police | |
| • Social Welfare Department | 1. Health urban planning. |
| 2. Low suspect of criminal on public. | |
| 3. Accommodating good city for citizen | |
| Social Volunteer | |
| • Social movement organization | |
| • NGO | Performs as a bridge between government and civil (homeless). |
| • Platform for communication. | |
| • Chance for implying the humancentered solution. | |
Touch point (T)
| System | Stakeholders |
|---|---|
| Mobile and portable to improve the capability of static shelter in the city. |
Occupies wider places with reducing the space limitations | Population control and management.
Help the stakeholders to solve city issue. |
OFFER (O)
| System Solution | Service Solution |
|---|---|
| People detection: The system that aims to detect the visitors as an input and output analysis in the mobile shelter. | Social education: The shelter is trying to accommodate the needs/challenges in the city to prepare the homeless as a ready-person to survive with short-term training skill. |
| Architectural design: Design consideration in providing both convenient and inconvenient based on | |
| the set regulation to avoid the uncontrolled user. | Life motivation: People should not end up on the street with limited living accommodation. We are offering the training in both physical and psychological matter with involving prospected stakeholders. |
| Behavioral data management: Working together with architectural design, this technology aims the proper data management to be shared with user’s relative to create a social connection and support government regulation. | Social design scenario: We believe homeless people passed some considerations to become homeless. Nevertheless, we are helping to reconnect with their relatives with aim to develop their emotion and as part of reducing the homeless population. |
| Data safety for social connection: Socialrelative sharing is an important yet crucial data, we provide as perfect as data safety scenario to let the user’s privacy is not leaked to the public. | Caretaker: We are proposing a smart shelter, yet also considering the pressure that homeless person has, Therefore, caretaker will handle of the maintaining job during the using time, as well as the job that can’t handled by technology. |
Experience (E)
We are considering this project is promiseable and can be implicated to follow a concept of social design for minority. Non Government Organizations and/or Social Enterprise implication promotes an independent community management to accommodate experience for a target user without being intimidated from the bureaucracy issues.
Utilizing the abandoned places in particular area, yet make it more profitable to develop people’s skill and reducing the uncontrollable homeless population in the city.
PILOT SERVICE BLUEPRINT
CONCLUSIONS
This project has discussed the application of user experience research and service design scenario to find the proper solution for the overwhelming homeless population. The behavioral and attitudinal analyses were integrated to contribute on the data collection process as a preliminary study. The finding of this project visualizes the smart mobile shelter to accommodate the homeless people with a humanistic facility over the city, nevertheless also educating them with some service management scenarios. The contribution of this project towards the public space development unveils as making an essential consideration in balancing every citizen's comfortability on using the public space maximally.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This project sends big regard to the intercultural study of NTUT and FH Potsdam that provide a platform to make a co-working environment due to the spatial distance. We also would like to thank Prof. Ryan Wang and Prof. Monika Junker for leading the whole process of this project with outstanding knowledge and experience.