Community-driven platform
The unemployment rate has recovered slightly since the start of the pandemic, however, with higher employer costs per hour worked, businesses are struggling to hire. In urban cities like Los Angeles, the unemployment rate is at a staggering 10.6, higher than the national average of 7.0 in Dec 2020. (U.S. BLS, Local Area Unemployment Statistics).
We found inspiration from seeing how community members stepped up during the COVID pandemic to donate face masks and PPE to frontline healthcare workers. This renewed awareness of collective giving is the inspiration behind our community-based charitable app called HomeBase.
How can homebase help?
Home base was the Best Entertaining Hack in the 2021 Sachackathon. The app serves as a platform for the community to engage in search and discovery of local causes, allows users to register as a volunteer at events, and as a hub to find charitys in need of donations.
The app offers easy access to engage with the community through group forums, direct messages, interactive mapping and keyword search. Our goal is to integrate the IBM Z framework (open source data sets) with our maps and search function to help users discover communities that are underserved from the Local Area Unemployment Statistics (LAUS) or by geographical location to highlight the programs that are most in need.
user research
Our team collaborated on Miro in a brainstorm and road mapping session. We were particularly interested in defining the problem objective:
“How might we make essential resources available for communities that are under-represented?”
We conducted a survey in the early discovery phase, and aggregated the results from a pool of users to design artifacts such as user flows and wireframes in Figma. We also conducted a moderated test of the features with real users to gauge the viability of the app. Within the 36 hours timeframe, our team worked on resolving user flow issues prior to ideating the minimum viable product.
Due to the time constraint of 36 hours of this hackathon, we were not able to perform multiple user tests. Among the surveyors, we were able to recruit individuals to conduct user testing at a later time. In an ideal environment, we should be able to quickly gather quantitative and qualitative feedback to get a bigger picture of user’s behaviors and pain points. In this scenario, we were satisfied with our users being able to complete the task and navigate through the app.
Reflection
We started with a team of 4, however had lost 2 crucial team members due to schedule conflict of the hackathon. Our core team was able to recruit a third member where we proceeded with the design roadmap and sprints. Using the agile principles and product roadmap to delegate work, our team delivered a fully functional MVP and a complete walkthrough presentation within 36 hours of the hackathon.
As a result, HomeBase won 1st place for Most Entertaining Hack at the SacHackathon in 2021
We are proud of creating an altruistic app that fosters genuine relationships and connections between community members.
We also learned how to effectively communicate, collaborate, and leverage each one of our team member’s skills to solve problems and ship a viable product.
We conducted a survey in the research phase, then distilled the results to help drive the outcome of our product’s purpose, architecture and user flow.
We conducted usability tests to validate our product’s functionality with a small group of users. We found minor issues with our user flow and were able to resolve them in a timely manner before proceeding to high-fidelity prototypes. As a results of the user testing, it help saved our team from creating multiple iterations and allowed us to complete the design sprint.
