In previous sprints, we’ve been gathering feedback through back and forth emails with the manager over at VNFC, the shelter trialing our site, but in this sprint we were finally able to meet in person. It quickly proved to be more fruitful and rewarding to collect feedback face-to-face; we were able to ask follow-up questions and illustrate our proposed ideas in real time. Best of all, the manager, Diego, was able to use this time to highlight the features he found useful and express thanks for smaller touches that he really enjoyed, and we learned that he and his staff are all fully trained and eager to make the switch from their current system to ours. His validation of our work delighted us, and we felt proud of the research we had conducted and the choices we had made to get to this point. There was still work to be done, and we immediately set to implementing changes based on Diego’s feedback.
Diego’s feedback was largely specific to the unique ways VNFC functions, so we had to strike a balance between tailoring things enough so that they satisfied VNFC’s needs, without compromising the intuitiveness and usefulness of the system to other shelters. We took some time to consider different solutions, brainstorming features and their placement on the page, ranking ideas based on how useful they’d be, and discarding ones that would impair or confuse other shelters. We eventually settled on solutions we thought would benefit both VNFC and other shelters, such as a way of extending our waitlist by having a “reserved” section for people returning on consecutive nights to reclaim their spots, a frequent occurrence at multiple shelters in Victoria.
Last sprint forced us to reckon with our marketing strategy, and this sprint was our answer to that struggle. We printed flyers and went to each emergency shelter to talk to the front desk about our site and the success VNFC has seen with it, and got contact information for managers whom front desk staff promised to alert and who we hope to set up meetings with. We did this on two occasions, and the front desk staff now recognize us and our product, and greet us with an enthusiasm that we hope will bubble up to their managers soon.
Alongside Dr. Michelle Vanchu-Orosco, our Community Partner at the Alliance to End Homelessness in the Capital Region, we also presented at the Downtown Service Providers meeting to city council members, ministry of social development staff, and others in the housing sector. We were met with positive responses, and eventually learned that people who were at the meeting were spreading the word about our website outside of it. We were even reached out to by a social services organization in Victoria who had heard about us from that meeting, and who created an account and made a post on our Community Forum page.
In the next sprint, we’ll be finalizing the changes we’ve made based on VNFC’s feedback, and facilitating their switch to fully implementing our site at their shelter. We’ll also be meeting with BC Housing to discuss the future of the Herluma project—according to our Community Partner, they share our excitement, so we’re eager to see where the Herluma project will go next.
