oh hello!
Thank you so much for stopping by and having a look-see at my submission for brief #3 Connection for the Disadvantaged.
My submission is an app designed to create a safe digital community space to seek, share, and connect people and resources and amplify the spirit of generosity – giving begets giving. If this app was a person, they would be the embodiment of Bumble and Craigslist’s secret love child that grew up with their master yogi aunt, Headspace.
The overall feel of the app is soft and inviting, humanizing the modality of technology as well as humanizing the act of seeking help. Asking for help is often a deeply emotional labor, with attachments to feelings of failure, shame, embarrassment, and unworthiness. By designing with mindful language and soothing visuals, users are invited to utilize the power of the collective to design their lives with autonomy and creativity.
The App Pages
01_LandingPage
the GOOD HOOD app is named to represent locality of the users and app functionality (also neighborly was taken) as well as the intention to spread positivity and tap into the collective power of your hood.
Pretty self-explanatory :)
02_SeekingSharing
Start with if you’re seeking or sharing resources – users choose each time they log in how they want to be using the app that day. The word choice ‘resources'‘ invites people of diverse backgrounds and needs to seek and share help. The user gets to dictate what they want to seek/share and to what extent.
03_ResourceCategory
Search for popular resource categories through playful and organic UI, again humanizing the ask for help. Larger shapes and those closer to the top indicate more users seeking/sharing that resource.
04_ResourceForum
Clicking into a resource category leads to a forum style page with user generated shares. Formatted reddit style with topic, user, date, and # of replies listed. Forum content is all shares or all seeks, depending on what you clicked into on the 02_SeekingSharing page. Users can also save (heart) any topic to save and pull up easily.
00_Profile
Clicking into the profile icon at top right goes to your bio. Every user is required to start by filling out a bio with a small blurb about me (given prompts at sign up, required with minimum word count to build trust between users). Also can make public what resources user is seeking or sharing with a messaging feature to connect directly from user to user. Not shown is auto GPS setting, which is used to highlight closest users first.
00_DirectMessaging
Clicking into the write me under a user’s profile. Prompt to focus content on what resource, image, links, files, etc. that the user is sharing.
THE APP IN ACTION
the Good Hood offers a customizable and focused space to easily tap into resources and human connection is necessary to cultivate the best conditions to optimize and progress in professional development. By sharing a pool of resources that would most affect the housing insecure and underserved communities (shelter, food, mental health, community…), individuals are given the conditions to flourish professionally and personally.
I realize this idea is limited to usage for those only with smartphones but I am realizing this on Feb 6, 9:40pm EST 😔. A solution would be to make it a paid app with a subscription plan (sliding scale) that will fund (along with grants and government assistance) smartphones to be distributed to those without them, naturally finding the demographic this was intended for.