Homely: An App for Finding “Home”

Overview

This project involved selection of our own human-centric design (HCD) research question, and then applying the HCD process to establish a body of research, refine and abstract research into themes and insights, and develop design principles that could apply to the final design.

The research portion of the project was done in a group for one class, and converted into a prototype mobile app for a separate class.

This research revolved around the design research question: How might we help a new, long-term resident feel at home in a new city?

The Problem Space

Everyone knows what it means to feel at home in a place, even if we can’t quite explain the feeling. Often, it’s a place we physically know and understand, are comfortable with, and are emotionally attached to.

For many reasons, people leave their original home to make a life in a new one. But that process is messy, complex, and people often don’t feel at home in that new place for years. “Home” is a set of qualities like physical knowledge, comfort, and emotional attachment that a person gains over time as they live in a place.

So we wanted to ask the question: How does the feeling of home actually get created? Is there a way to efficiently create that feeling? Can we optimize the process to make it quick and easy? Can we productize the process of finding “home?”

Researching the Feeling of Home

The biggest research hurdle is understanding what the idea of “home” actually means to people. Initial literature reviews covered concepts like orientation, wayfinding, and wayshowing, which evolved into research on place identity and attachment. Through our research, we discovered that the feeling of home was not simply an understanding of physical space, but a complex social, emotional, and physical attachment to a place gained through interactions with it and others who lived there

To explore these ideas, we interviewed 23 participants on the concepts and qualities of “home.” Most users had recently moved to new cities following work or school, but we also interviewed “outlier” users who had little to know traditional sense of a “home” (e.g. military brats who moved frequently during childhood).

Research Synthesis & Findings

Raw Data into Themes

Each team member categorized all the interviewee comments into themes, and then we all came together to categorize our themes. This method of abstraction served as a check against individual bias and helped ensure all interviewees were heard. Through these themes, we were able to better understand what a sense of home is and what creates it.

Themes

• Exploration is key to building context in and knowledge of a place

• A person’s routine forms the starting point from which to build familiarity

• As familiarity in and comfort with a place increases, a person will feel “at home.”

Themes into Insights

Deeper insights were discovered through further abstraction of themes based on individual interviewee comments. These insights helped us understand some of the underlying principles we would need to fulfill in a final design. Insights were analyzed and refined as an entire class.

Insights

• New residents take initiative to educate themselves on their new surroundings in order to engage with others.

• Connections between a new resident and a new place are strengthened by exploring in a variety of different ways.

• New long-term residents are motivated to build on their routine through further exploration.

• It’s more convenient to explore if it’s on the way to or near a place one normally goes.

• When relocating, people feel isolated and unengaged.

• People are more likely to stay and invest in a place where they feel attached to others.

Developing the Journey Map to Finding “Home”

Synthesizing research led to the discovery of a linear pathway that our interviewees were generally taking to find a sense of home. This conceptual pathway describes an individual’s growing familiarity and comfort with a place based on a series of actions taken. The end state of this pathway is the development of an individual who has intimate knowledge of a place and feels comfortable within that place, or what our research participants would define as “home.”

The journey map shows three “phases” of integration into a new place:

1. Routines - the physical locations (and accompanying knowledge) a user frequents due to their requirements and needs (e.g. you have to go to work, you need to find a grocery story to have food, etc.)

2. Exploration - the primary method of expanding routines through physically locating and discovering things a person likes, as well as meeting others in those places. Exploration occurs after the establishment of routine locations (e.g. “Oh, I wonder if there’s a coffee shop near work”).

3. Community Building - this is the catalyst for creating place attachment and occurs with enough exploration and interaction with people in explored places (e.g. “Hey newbie, you should come out with us all for a drink after yoga class today”).

Developing Design Principles

Based​ ​on​ ​our research, themes​, ​and​ ​insights, the following design principles could be applied to any design solution: 

• Flexible​/Personalized:​ ​Newcomers to a city have a wide range of interests, so the solution should be able process a variety of ever-changing inputs and provide personalized recommendations, insights, and activities based on those inputs.

• Easy-to-use/Universal/Localized​:​ Our users are from all over the world, and each one needs the same, easy experience. The solution should be understandable by various types of individuals of various backgrounds, languages, and cultures.

• Deep, Contextual Information: The design will require repeated use as a user references it to further integrate into their new lifestyle. It will also need to provide deep, nuanced information based on local insight rather than simply general knowledge of a place.

• Accurate Navigation:​ ​Because users will be placing significant trust in the design to navigate them both physically and culturally, we must ensure the design has a high-level of accuracy and is well-vetted in terms of content.

• Trustworthy: ​​The design will provide well-sourced, documented content from experts to ensure high trust in the design, its recommendations, and its provided assistance.

Ideation

Ideas for the final design ranged from wearables that a person would use to signify themselves as a newcomer to a physical guidebook and even a dating-style service for learning a new place alongside new friends. However, these design ideas didn’t fulfill enough of the design principles, and presented issues for personal safety or complexity of production. We needed some method that was mobile, constantly-updating, and personalized based on user habits and likes.

Solution

Ultimately, a mobile app was selected for its ability to fulfill the most design principles, as well as based on a variety of interview comments that helped point us in a direction. This is not to say that user requests are always correct; however, in this case, user requests did factor into some kind of mobile app.

Overall, even if a mobile app were not selected, the final design would have to provide an individual with the major qualities that contribute to a sense of home: physical orientation, cultural immersion, and community building.

Final Design: The Homely App

This work utilized the research done in the previous class, pulling design principles into a mobile app for rapidly onboarding someone into a new place so that they can easily and quickly find a sense of home.

Homely is a learning-centric fusion of Bumble BFF, Meetups, Airbnb Experiences, and TripAdvisor. It’s goal is to provide an efficient, process-based method of learning a new place by scaffolding experiences and connections based on physical orientation, cultural immersion, and community building.

The app would be used mostly on weekends over the first 6-months of having moved to a new place.

Major Features:

• Linear learning plan featuring custom tasks created based on user-selected routines and interests.

• New interest discovery based on routines.

• Checklists and instructions for how to complete learning plan tasks.

• Resident-hosted meetups.

• Integration with a map engine like Google Maps to provide detailed location and business information.

• Cultural insights/articles written by local residents for supply deep, unspoken cultural information.

Initial Set-up Screens

On first entry, a user will set up their routines and interests. These serve as the basis for the suggestion engine and learning plan. These can be adjusted at any time, though it’s unlikely a user will set these more than once. Routines form the foundation of “what a user knows” so that the app can start suggesting tasks and other interests nearby or along the way to those locations. Interests provide a baseline for what a user likes to do, so that the app can suggest more, similar activities or experiences to help a user explore local areas further.

Learning Plan & Task Screens

Based on routines and interests, the learning plan generates a task list to develop experience and familiarity with a new place’s physical orientation, community, and culture. Tasks are provided weekly and a user may complete them in any order that week. However, previous weeks’ tasks provide scaffolding for future tasks (e.g. the first week may teach you how to use public transportation so that you may use public transportation to complete future weeks’ tasks).

Each task provides details, a list of supplies, and step-by-step instructions for accomplishing that task.

Interests Screens

Based on user-defined interests, Homely will generate a map of potential new interests nearby your routines or along the routes to your routines. The interests map pushes a user to explore similar interests nearby what they already know to slowly push users outside of their comfort zone and help them explore more. With more exploration comes more interactions, knowledge, and connection.

Meetups Screens

Meetups are special activities that may be tasks within the learning plan. They provided locally-hosted excursions with other new residents to create community and provide deep cultural knowledge (via an experienced host). Meetups provide physical orientation, cultural immersion, and community building all in one activity.

Resident Insights

Insights are articles written by current, long-term residents. They explicitly provide deep cultural insight into how a place actually works and why a place is the way it is, not simply suggestions or other general info. Insights help rapidly train users in a place’s “unspoken” knowledge.

Reflections, Conceptual Holes & Future Work

Due time and other constraints, this project could only be so in-depth, and thus, there are conceptual holes and complexities that require additional reflection or research.

1. More Usability Testing Needed
   We were unable to test final designs against users, and extensive analysis and testing of prototypes is required.

2. Money-making & Engagement
   It’s unclear at this moment how such an app makes money, nor how it will engage local residents to host meetups or write articles. It may be that such an app is a paid service and that money flows to content creators and meetup hosts. Perhaps such content is sponsored or commissioned by Homely.

3. Roll-out Plan and Cities
   Significant consideration of what cities and locations are appropriate for an app. At what city size does the app become unnecessary or unable to work as intended? Is it only for cities or are there other non-city locations such an app would work in? What cities would get the app first? All of this detail would still need to be analyzed.