Lifeline
A vending machine concept to combat homelessness and change the way you donate money.
Project Overview
CHALLENGE
Design a concept for a vending machine and use systems thinking to understand and map the system it exists in.
TOOLS
SKILLS
COURSE
TIMELINE
Adobe Illustrator
Systems thinking, secondary research, survey design, personas, journey maps, systems diagrams, visual design, sketching, illustration, storyboarding, storytelling
IxD 2: Systems, Erin Malone
5 weeks, Spring 2020
This is the PDF presentation for my systems thinking vending machine, Lifeline.
Problem Statement
DIRECTION
The only constraint on this project was that it had to be a vending machine; however, whatever products or services the machine offered was completely up to me. Living in San Francisco at the time of this project, I was very aware of the severity of the homelessness crisis not just in the Bay Area, but all over the state of California.
HMW . . . ?
I didn't want my machine to sell something unnecessary that would be interesting for a few minutes, but inevitably discarded or thrown away. This led me to my "How Might We..." question.
How might we use donations to fulfill the needs of San Francisco's homeless population?
Business Plan
BUSINESS PROBLEM
As of 2019, San Francisco is home to over 8,000 homeless individuals. This is a 14% increase since 2017. The majority of these people are unsheltered and do not have a stable income.
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Many feel compelled to help those less fortunate, but people have reservations when it comes to donating money. Often, people worry about how the money they give will be used, and they have doubts about an unfamiliar organization's trustworthiness.
BUSINESS SOLUTION
The Lifeline vending machine tries to solve both aspects of this problem by harnessing the power of donations to get San Francisco’s homeless their day-to-day necessities.
BUSINESS GOALS
1. Provide the homeless population with a reliable resource for important items, such as medical products, hygienic products, and food.
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2. Provide a new way of donating money that guarantees donors that their money will be put to use in a safe and transparent way.
BUSINESS AUDIENCE
There are two distinct audiences:
1. San Francisco’s homeless population, and
2. Workers and residents of the city with money to spare and the desire to give back to their community.
BUSINESS PROFITS
Although the machine is a form of charity to the less fortunate, it functions similarly to a normal vending machine, where Person A pays for and
receives a product.
However, the Lifeline vending machine gives the product to another party. Person A donates money to the machine, which Person B then uses to claim a product.
Since products are being paid for rather than given away for free, the costs of the business are covered by the money provided by donors. There is also the potential for partnerships with government departments or similarly focused charities.
Research
SURVEY
For this project, I wanted to understand how people feel about donating money, particularly donating money to the homeless. I hypothesized that people would have reservations about donating to a new organization in general, but I also expected that some people would have a level of distrust helping the homeless (along the lines of "What if they use my money to buy drugs or alcohol?").
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I used Google Forms to create a survey that asked about how important donating money is in general, why they donate money, how often they encounter homeless people, whether they give them money when they see them, and why or why not.
FINDINGS
I realized that my peers at school didn't really fit the target audience for this project, so I shared this survey on social media and received responses from a more diverse group of people. Here are some of the key findings from these survey results:
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1. Everyone surveyed finds it important to actively contribute to the well-being of their communities.
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2. People have reservations when it comes to donating to charity: Is this a reputable, trustworthy group? Will my money be used in an appropriate way (i.e. not to pay an executive's salary)? Is my donation amount too small to make a difference?
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3. People do not want to directly give money to a homeless person or a panhandler due to:
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63% of people do not donate because they do not have extra money on hand.
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45% of people don't donate due to worrying about how the person will choose to spend the money (e.g. on alcohol or drugs).
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36% of people do not donate due to feeling uncomfortable approaching / interacting with the person asking for money.
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27% of people do not donate due to distrusting the person / their story (e.g. someone who claims to be a disabled or a veteran)
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18% of people don't donate due to the thought that it won't make a difference in comparison to the larger problem of homelessness.
Key results from my survey on people's donation habits.
Process
CONCEPT MODEL
My first step in mapping this system was creating a concept model. To fully explore the range of topics that are connecting to my vending machine, I started with a mind map, which I then refined into two cluster maps, and finally into a concept model.
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I started by sketching things out in a notebook and moving into Adobe Illustrator once the map had been satisfactorily refined. Below, you can see my process. To see the final versions of my concept model and other systems diagrams, go to the "Final Diagrams" section of this page.
Mind map, 2 cluster maps, and 2 concept models for Lifeline vending machine.
STOCK FLOW
I then moved on to stock flow diagrams. I determined my two stocks to be the number of people buying from the machine, and the number of people collecting goods from the machine. I used this diagram to show the different factors that would have an effect (an increase or a decrease) on the number of people using the machine for either reason.
3 initial sketches of my stock flow diagrams.
FEEDBACK LOOPS
The feedback loops for this system demonstrate the way that different factors from the stock flow diagram influence and interact with each other. For example, more homeless people using the machine generates more popularity, which leads to less available stock in the machine. This in turn decreased the number of homeless people using the machine. I considered both balancing and reinforcing loops in these sketches.
2 initial sketches of my feedback loops.
JOURNEY MAPS AND PERSONAS
At this point, I had a solid understanding of how my machine works and the system that it exists in; however, I had not closely looked at the audiences for it. I took what I learned from my earlier survey and I did secondary research on the average life and needs of California's homeless population to inform the personas and their perspective in the journey maps. There are two journey maps: one represents the journey of a person who is donating money to the vending machine, and the other represents a homeless person who uses the vending machines to get necessities.