What do you see when you See a homeless person

can i ask you all to close your eyes for

a minute

picture someone living homeless

what do you see you can open them again

in my work as a design researcher

i use design thinking tools to help

people to see

i teach design research here at emily

carr

here’s what i know design research

is about three things curiosity

compassion and collaboration

having curiosity developing compassion

and using collaborative tools to help

people

to solve problems themselves

research begins with curiosity

i myself am annoyingly curious about

everything

you have to be to be a researcher it’s

all about the question

design research can help people

to become more curious about the

possible

my own curiosity led me to ask the

question

how might we shift or change

the way people see those experiencing

homelessness

in completing my masters last year at

sfu

i worked in my own community

i wanted to know why people were so

uncomfortable

with homelessness some people seem to be

afraid

some people don’t really know how to say

hello

and still others really want to help but

don’t know how

i’m wondering if we can break those

walls down

i’m wondering if we can create more

compassion

while still respecting even honoring

our frustrations

i started my work with a survey of over

130 people

just to get a sense of the mood out

there

when i asked people what they thought of

the new supportive housing coming to our

community

i got a range of answers from hate it

it will allow drug addicts a safe place

to use drugs and store stolen property

all the way to these are human beings

i find it appalling that anyone can be

against it

following that survey i conducted three

community workshops

with people from very different

backgrounds people experiencing

homelessness

people who lived in the surrounding

neighborhood people who support those

living with homelessness

as well as local politicians and

businesses

and i ask them to collaborate in mixed

groups

homeless with housed addicts with

politicians

i used three different design thinking

tools in my workshops

the first was a quick cursory education

i put posters all around the walls with

quotes from the survey

it gave people an idea of the variation

in

in thinking in the community

it got people’s juices going it got them

thinking

and i invited them to comment on post-it

notes

the next tool i used was empathy maps

this is where compassion comes into play

these are big sheets of paper with what

we call a persona in the middle

high school students people experiencing

homelessness

elderly people in the neighborhood

businesses

and around that center were four

quadrants

what do they see what do they hear

what do they think and feel and what do

they say and do

and i asked people to work in groups of

three to five at a table

to fill in the quadrants they chatted

while they did that

this was really collaboration at work

the final tool and the most powerful was

the storytelling

posters i gave each table again

a big sheet of cardboard and a variety

of materials

fabric ribbons scissors glue

magazines and i asked them

to tell a story of how things could be

better in our community

the last thing i asked them to do was to

explain this work to the rest of the

room

i asked them to tell us what they did

why they did it

and what it all meant

this is really collaboration at work

now i kind of thought that this was

going to come up with some kind of

magical solution to how we can change

the way people see homelessness

but what i got was evidence evidence

that people could work together

that they were proud of their solutions

and they owned them

they had things in common they talked

about their hobbies

they talked about their children and

their grandchildren

these exercises had brought people

together and created a sense of

community

well that’s great but what am i going to

do with all of this

well my next project is to ask people

who have lived with homelessness

to guide and lead students and teachers

to create a learning tool to help those

students better understand

the humanity behind poverty and

homelessness

and i hope to use that tool all across

canada

to create a more informed and

compassionate group of voters

we need to do this work and we need

curiosity compassion and collaboration

to do that

i attended a conference hosted by the

othering a belonging institute at uc

berkeley last year

it was so exciting for someone who’s a

design thinker

and something really stuck with me it

was this

zulu word sauerbona

it means i see you

i’m hoping that design thinking will

help us all to be seen

close your eyes what do you see