Summary:

Through exploratory research methods, we identified actor's interactions and touchpoints related to housing as a service habitat. Our team analyzed how current housing policy policies affect communities and traced the causal relationships between them.

Challenge:

How to bring tenants closer to policymakers and identify what interventions can be recommended to change power dynamics in affordable housing.

My Role:

UX Researcher | Service Design

Project Timeline:

April 2021 - May 2021

REFLEXIVITY

Framing Question:

<aside> 🏘️ How might we shift the paradigm of housing from a commodity to a right?

</aside>

Approach & Research Methods:

Our team started the selection process by identifying organizations and experts that have first-hand experience servicing underserved communities in housing policy. To accomplish this we used ethnographic methods like in-depth and semi-structured interviews with international and local housing experts.
Our questions covered relational aspects between agents and interventions they proposed to help alleviate problems around homelessness and evictions especially around Covid-19.
As a team, we synthesized the qualitative data from the interviews to formulate stakeholder activities within the housing ecosystem. By using a systems-level approach to mapping I identified how social actors, organizations, and policies are able to wrap around complex social and historical dimensions of affordable housing models. We used these activities to design a topography map as a final outcome which helped experts understand major themes that slowed the implementation of policies that protected individual's housing rights.

Actors & Agents:

I collaborated with a team of technologists and other service designers to map the topography of affordable housing. The stakeholders we interviewed were from a wide range of sectors and came from organizations like UN-Habitat and Esusu (a Fin-tech company bridging the racial gap in housing).