Throughout the thesis investigation, the research question morphed according to the situations at hand. In the beginning, the focus was to improve the Greenville Community Shelter Health Clinic’s service experience, but informal discussions with medical student volunteers uncovered external factors that warranted an examination of homeless social and public policy issues. Later, I learned that there are many policies, strategies, and entities that serve the homeless. Visually mapping the complexity became a focal point to get a broader view of the actors and situations that impact homelessness public services. The visual map unexpectedly helped to uncover additional issues of social exclusion and access to information about homelessness resources. Over time, my thesis investigation turned out to be a “political project aimed not at ameliorating needs, but producing or enabling conditions for making fundamental shifts in systems of power.”[1] The design methodology I used where helpful in many aspects, but a deeper knowledge of public policy planning would have provided a specific lens to examine the social problems and assess the outcomes of resolutions. The benchmark of outcomes for graphic designers may generally be physical artifacts, which is how I initially assessed resolutions. Instead, I referred to Herbert Simon definition of design as an act of “changing existing situations into preferred ones.”[2] Through Simon’s lens, I was able to recognize that there were resolutions that possibly made an impact. For example, leaders noted that the map I developed could be a tremendous tool to help other actors visualize the complexity. Also, it was noted that my constant inquiry about why the homeless were not engaged influenced decisions to administer surveys to service providers, community members, and the homeless about the quality of public services. In reflection, designing for social problems is just as much about creating an environment for change as designing objects that operate within the environment. I began the project hoping to improve homelessness public services and found that services “are complex social systems as their performance depends on the quality of human interactions” rather than products.[3]
[1] Agid, Shana. “How can we design something to transition people from a system that doesn't want to let them go?” Design Philosophy 3 (2011). Accessed on June 4, 2012. http://www.desphilosophy.com/dpp/home.html.
[2] Simon, Herbert. The Sciences of the Artificial. 3rd ed. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1996.
[3] “Service Design Network Manifesto.” Service Design Network. Accessed on July 12, 2012. http://www.service-design-network.org/content/sdn-manifesto.