ASHLEY HU
Design Researcher
Redesign - Emmaus House Clothing Closet
CHALLENGE
The Savannah Clothing Closet is presently operated by Emmaus House in collaboration with community volunteers. They provide clean and essential clothing and hygiene items weekly to anyone in line. Some individuals arrive with a small request, while others need everything; how can a small and mighty organization fueled by volunteers' energy continue to sustain the community through these valuable resources and handle the growth in needs and donations?
DELIVERABLES
In order to provide innovative insights and service system solutions, this project focused on developing internal and external processes and system enhancements with stakeholders based on the Emmaus House Clothing Closet service system. Solutions were based on systems improvement, analysis, observation, and interaction.
DURATION
Sep - Nov, 2022
TEAM
Liuyun Hu
Siyun Lu
Chongyuan Yin
Shailjia Patel
Robin Owens
MY ROLE
Service Designer
Research Leader
Design Researcher
MY RESPONSIBILITIES
Paper Walkthrough Prototyping
System Mapping
Workshop Facilitation
Stakeholder Management
How can we help EMMAUS HOUSE Clothing Closet focus on the experience of all stakeholders as the way to create a more sustainable service and community?
1
What are the best ways/channels to increase volunteers and clothing donations at The Clothing Closet?
2
How can we improve the efficiency of The Clothing Closet process?
3
How can we better serve the clients who come to Emmaus House?
4
In what ways can we use the Clothing Closet to meet longer-term needs, help people experiencing homeless, and increase equity?
OUR DESIGN
Instead of redesigning the volunteering space, we designed a whole service that includes strategy, space, and all physical and touch points for Emmaus House.
In this tutorial video, we provided the new process we redesigned for EMMAUS HOUSE volunteers so that they can quickly know how to do the volunteer work.
IMMEDIATE IMPLEMENTATION
Let's take a look at what we've done so far!
Before
After
DESIGN
Form Redesign
Sorting Guide Poster
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SOME ROOM REDESIGN DETAILS
Before
Before
After
After
We painted the wall
LONG TERM STRATEGY
We delivered a future service long-term map for Emmaus House, which includes future scenarios of how the Clothing Closet services can be operated through the digital form, and different roles responsible for different tasks.
Click to enlarge the image👆
BACKGROUND
The Savannah Clothing Closet, started in 2014, attempts to fill a vital gap for those experiencing homelessness: acquiring clean and suited clothing. While shelters might provide some shelter and soup kitchens provide food, many left in between need goods like clothing, backpacks, and tents. The Clothing Closet, run in partnership with Emmaus House, Epiphany Church, and SCAD Serve, operates every Wednesday morning to serve its clients, as well as has volunteers to sort and clean the clothing the day before.
DESIGN PROCESS
I conducted a detailed research process to gain a comprehensive understanding of the volunteer experience. This involved synthesizing the existing challenges and collaborating with our stakeholders to identify potential opportunities. The insights gained from this process were pivotal in designing and implementing both the service and the workspace.
Research
Synthesis
Ideation
Pilot & Validation
01
Understanding Stakeholders
In order to understand stakeholders, and what value they exchange with each other, the ecosystem map was created to identify all the people or organizations involved in the whole service system. Our stakeholders were people who experience homelessness, Emmaus House, who provide services for them, and volunteers who participate throughout the whole Clothing Closet service process. Other stakeholders included Christ church, the Church of Epiphany, the community of St. Joseph, and Savannah’s homeless authority.
Click to enlarge the image👆
02
Understanding
User Experience & Service Process
In order to understand the underlying reason, we conducted multiple types of research, including working scenario observation, in-depth interviews, culture probes, and case studies.
Observation
Observation in the Clothing Closet space, from the sorting place to the distribution place.
Interviews
Interviews were conducted with 2 staff, 4 volunteers and 2 key stakeholdes, in order to understand the relationship and whole experience.
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Culture Probe
A board was designed and held in the waiting line when we provided clothing closet service, 3 different color stickers were prepared to get feedback with emotions from our end-users.
PROCESS MAPPING
From previous data collection, we started to map the workflow of EMMAUS HOUSE, the experiences of the whole process, especially the actions, pain points, movements, and opportunities of volunteers, staff, and our clients.
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Service Workflow of Clothing Closet Service
There are 2 main service processes that happened in the Clothing Closet Service that were mapped through visualization. We started to map out these two main processes including the Tuesday clothing sorting process and the Wednesday distribution process. Then we started to analyze the pain points and opportunities so we could redesign these whole processes.
Tuesday Sorting
Wednesday Distribution
Click to enlarge the image👆
SERVICESCAPE
Servicescape was visualized to analyze how the staff and volunteers work in the workspace, and how it impacts the service flow.
Wednesday Distribution Process Servicescape
SYNTHESIS
From the service process we analyzed according to the research data, the sythesis workshop was run in the internal design team.
Understanding Pain Points
After identifying the four key phases of The Clothing Closet, we started to identify all the pain points collected during our research to best understand how they interacted with each other.
Understanding Connections
We then grouped and moved the pain points to understand the way the different phases interact with each other to determine larger insights about their connections.
DESIGN OPPORTUNITIES
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CO-CREATIVE IDEATION WORKSHOP
The co-creation workshop was facilitated to get more ideas from our stakeholders, so we can align the work with stakeholders and get cohesive solution from the volunteer and staff's perspective.
Ideas Prioritization Workshop
We put in all the ideas we came up with and did the ideation session with our all stakeholders including Clothing Closet volunteers, staff, and interior designer.
Paper Desktop Walkthrough Workshop
We first made a space prototype to test the stakeholder's characters with the place concept and get feedback from stakeholders to change the label.
Volunteers, interior designers, directors, and staff who work in the Clothing Closet service all trying to move the different blocks to reimagine the room and movement lines
DESIGN ALIGNMENT
The co-creation workshop helped us to iterate the workspace design concept and the service concept, also aligning with stakeholders such as Emmause House director, staff, and volunteers, the design solution turned out to be holistic and provide value to different stakeholders.
Past Workspace Flow
Redesigned Workspace Flow
Implemented Design Concept
FEEDBACK FROM CLIENTS
The Non-profit organization needs to continue helping in the long term to make systematic changes. A week after the project, we returned to EMMAUS HOUSE as volunteers to get involved in the new sorting and distribution process. I collected the latest feedback:
" I never think about how it looks like now. I came here one year ago. And this is the best experience that I have now."
Volunteers
"I am so excited to see such a clean floor. Do you have any time to change other rooms in the future?"
Staffs