Reframing asking to agency with LifeMade Market.
Learning life skills through making.
How might we empower people experiencing housing instability?
Individual growth within the housing agency system is crucial to making room for new housing residents in need.
Problem
People experiencing housing instability have limited:
Choice: Many decisions are made as last resort options.
Agency: They want to be involved with making meaningful decisions impacting their life.
Trust: Many strangers who they can’t connect with are involved in their life.
Agencies helping with housing instability have:
Limited resources: May resort to creative but ineffective solutions to meet the needs of residents and staff.
Overworked staff: Staff don’t have time to to use their expertise because they are filling gaps.
Agency: Staff don’t often involve residents with making meaningful decisions.
Solution
Reframing asking to agency for both residents and staff by building trust within LifeMade Markets’ learning and making process.
LifeMade Market provides:
Course Series: Choose a skill that can generate income.
Workshop Kit: Provide a kit that allows women to begin creating.
Marketplace: Generate income from the products they create.
Empower Women: Teach women what it takes to run a business.
Key features of LifeMade Market:
Nudges and reminders
Interactive learning
Support throughout the program
Personalized kit and course
Process
16 Informational interviews with case workers, directors, and residents. Affinity mapping, journey mapping, defining user types and personas, defining user flows, creating wireframes and prototyping.
LifeMade Market’s dashboard showcases course and sales progress.
Women can track their course progress and keep track of sales from the products that they create. The dashboard nudges and incentivizes women to monetize their ideas and creations.
Courses are broken down into manageable learning modules.
Women can learn at their own pace and as their schedule allows. They can check in with advisors and mentors to help them complete courses and learn course material.
Students can actually apply what they learn by taking action.
Students can track their progress within a course so that they feel motivated to keep taking action towards their goals and their own independence. They have agency.
NAISHA, HOUSING RESIDENT
“I feel like I don’t have many choices in my life right now.The choices I do make are necessary for my survival, regardless of whether I like it or not.”
LifeMade market combines learning, commerce, and fundraising.
The platform starts by educating women on creative skills that they can learn and access. Next, the platform helps women upload their products to a marketplace where sponsors and donors can purchase items and give back to women in need directly.
Meet Naisha. She is a single mom who needs to earn money towards her savings and care for her children.
Individuals like Naisha need options that stimulate their creativity and help them feel empowered to take agency into their own hands. A platform like LifeMade Market combines learning with real world applications to help women like Naisha make choices for themselves.
While LifeMade Market will start out as a learning platform, the goal is to expand it’s offerings to turn it into a marketplace.
The MVP (minimum viable product) version of LifeMade market will consist of courses and workshops. As the platform grows and expands, the e-commerce and financial tracking features will be added.
RESEARCH PROCESS
Affinity clustering and mapping stakeholders and user types to uncover key insights.
DESIGN PROCESS
Building a design system from scratch by mapping out workflows, creating wireframes, and a designing style guide for the platform design.
FEATURED DESIGNER
Meet Ilona Belous.
My name is Ilona, like Barcelona, and I’m a nerd with a purpose.
My name is Ilona, like Barcelona, and I’m a nerd with a purpose. I'm interested in using technology to create meaningful products and services for the people that use them.
With my experience as a former event designer at GLDN Soul Events and a non-profit program coordinator, I marry UX design and strategy for brands and companies that are looking to give back to their communities. Let's go forth and create value in the world!