Nurture Neighbor

Inspiration

From our research, we found that the overwhelming majority of Millennials are interested in supporting social causes. And while many of them live in cities and witness the homelessness crisis first hand everyday, only a few actually contribute towards helping this issue.

In our survey, we found that the lack of contribution comes from:

Not knowing enough about the crisis - how bad it is? how it affects individuals?
Not knowing how to help

Knowing that this is a special, non-traditionally philanthropic group of people, we racked our brains for ideas. How do we position the cause and bring it closer to millenials? How can we empower them to take action immediately and for the long term too?

To bridge millennial’s desire to join in the cause, we made helping to be highly engaging, interactive and motivating. Our approach is to gamify participation in fighting the homelessness crisis.

What it does

Our game encourages users to take on challenges like learning, sharing, donating, and volunteering to help their neighbors in need. By applying the gamification methods of leveling up, badges, and leadership board, users are motivated to continuously complete the challenges. Our symbol of growth is a flower, as with any real plant or a social movement, you need to keep the momentum or it will die out. We nudge our users by showing their flower wilting if they have not completed any challenge in a while.

We believe this game will not only encourage Millennials to take part in the fight against homelessness but also become a continuous ally in the long term.

How we built it

We started out with rough sketches of how the app could work and look, and an outline of the content inspired by a talk with the NGO Bay Area Rescue Mission. High-fidelity mockups and user flows of the key moments in the journey were created using Figma. The actual site is built using HTML5, CSS, javascript and Flask, a lightweight WSGI web application framework to rapidly get our site up and running. We planned for our game to be web-based so that it could be accessible across platforms and easy to expand for more challenges and features in the future. The game offers a checklist of simple and effective ways to help.

Challenges I ran into

We spent the first 6 hours going back and forth on many ideas and decided on a semblance of a solution. We took a break and half the team started working on the prototype.

When we came back, we realized the "solution" we decided on was merely a social media kit + some incremental change to existing content. This was not something we were excited nor proud of. Most importantly, we didn't think it would solve the issue and make a lasting impact. We realized we could push the envelope further and actually create value through a platform.

Accomplishments that we are proud of

After the realization that the solution we worked on for hours was not a viable one, we only had 1 hour before our meeting with Stephanie from Bay Area Rescue Mission.

A major brainstorm session took place and within 20 minutes, we came up with this game. We knew it was the right idea because of the amount of excitement that continued to build. Everyone was throwing out suggestions for the game and we collectively lit up.

We had the call with Stephanie a few minutes later and her validation fueled our motivation even more.

By then, we were equipped with validated assumptions resulting from our survey, we had acclimatized into the persona’s mindset, and were ready to create a valuable product.

What we learned

Hackathons are hubs of creativity and the perfect place for innovative solutions to long standing problems. Sometimes we just need a kick in the butt to really make a difference. - Anh

Our call with Stephanie was enlightening. Her anecdotes shed light on heartbreaking and inspiring interactions with the homeless. Our hack aims to motivate users to learn about the plight these people face and take action. (Kashvi)

Sidney Kat Francine