Community Meeting (Jan 23, 2019): Ample Labs

Description

Presenters: CG Chen, Cheryl Li and Matt Wong

Ample Labs was born out of a pilot project called HomeTO and a desire to contribute to our local community here in Toronto. Their work was originally inspired by social initiatives like San Francisco’s Link-SF as well as broad research showing that even when experiencing homelessness, most people rely heavily on smartphones to find vital information.

Since then, the team has grown to include a dedicated and diverse group of designers, developers, researchers, consultants, public servants, and community members—all united by a common commitment to using tech for social good.

Website: https://www.amplelabs.co/

Notes

Video recording

• Ample labs is a Social start-up
• ChalmersBot
  • Web app to help people find local resources
• Accelerator
• 80~90% of people experiencing homelessness are invisible, in transition or not often counted
  • 90% own phone
  • 70% own smartphone
• Started with user research
• One researcher was inclusive design grad from OCADU
• People tend to turn to Google, not services that are established. People don't know where to look or what's available to them
• What is available is not easy to use
• They created personas to capture their users more generally
• Is a chatbot something people would want to use?
• Is it easy to use?
• Use the chatbot as a means to track what people are looking for
• Initially started by partnering with Ada, but it was too rigid a tool for their needs
• Amazon (Lex, Lambda) is another solution they're currently exploring
• Getting data from
  • Homeless Help
  • 211 Toronto Data
  • Manual Entry
    • Corrections based on actual observations, etc.
  • Web scraper Tool
  • + on ChalmersBot
• Demo of ChalmersBot
  • It gets your location to show you what's nearby for meals, shelter, etc.
  • Gives you directions to get there on foot (using Google Maps)
  • Asks for feedback and suggestions of things it should suggest or offer
• Have seen about 500 unique users so far
• Implemented analytics to track usage
• Privacy concerns?
• Question: Resources change, how do they address them other than checking manually?
  • They checked with the city for their process. The city checks twice a year to make sure everything they have listed is still valid
  • Maybe ChalmersBot can ask if the service accessed is still valid and the user can report themselves (crowdsourced)
  • How do they know when the city has updated? They don't know yet
• Question: security and privacy? How do they handle the information? How is security being handled on either end?
  • Personal info: the only thing they can collect currently are their location and the thing they searched for
  • They have "eligibility" info that is collected like age, gender, sexual orientation, etc. and so they're working on that
  • They don't use the information
  • Security: not currently being worked on
  • Suggestions
    • Would be good to have a plain language terms and conditions to make it easier to use and understand
    • Hook ChalmersBot up through SMS?
      • Cost is restrictive
• Question: how do you develop your personas? Do you see any limitations?
  • Distances you from the reality of people's lives, from individuals
  • They wanted personas to frame who users of the product would be in the beginning
  • Their lead researcher is suggesting to use mental models and move away from personas
  • Giving names to the personas could add more distance from the case, "historifies" it.
• Questions from Ample
  • They work with Eloisa!
  • What are some best practices when it comes to Inclusive Design research?
  • How about design based on that research?
  • Does IDRC use personas?
    • We suggests using codesign instead, as a process
    • Personas have limitations
    • Use narratives, stories, real comments from real people instead
    • When you try to make a persona, you're summarizing, reducing a group of people that may not represent what they want in their life
    • Going through entire stories can take time, but it's okay, it's real, just publish all of them. If not everyone goes through all the stories, it's okay
    • In our practice, we would be losing richness and diversity of experience
  • Are there projects where there is a need for personas instead of individual narratives?
    • Might have been helpful in a case where it was a very technical project for requirements building. Even then, it's almost a dozen personas.
    • Personas can be a useful shorthand, but they abstract away specificity
      • Once you shear off the things that don't fit in a persona, you lose that extra information and requirements
    • Useful when you do have a clear set of functional requirements that need to be satisfied
    • Putting names and titles on them may not be the most useful
    • Instead of personas, maybe create vignettes or user stories and test the application within that specific situation
  • (missed a question about NLP and chatbot?)
    • Giving people the time to speak, if they speak slowly, etc
    • Going into a group, let them be the ones to make you feel comfortable rather than the other way around
    • Embedded codesign?
    • When Ample was going into the shelters, were there people from the shelters to facilitate the sessions?
      • Yes
    • Involve those groups right from the beginning. Build trust, they're part of your team, go back to them, get them to test your product, etc.
    • A codesigner's role will change from session to session
    • In certain locations, they don't want anyone from the outside to be there, so you would share materials and requirements with a person in the group and they will conduct the session themselves (e.g. teachers in a classroom)
  • When people have gone through trauma, how can you have them share that experience without forcing them to relive it?
    • Make sure you collaborate with people who are part of the organization
    • Getting emotional doesn't necessarily mean you've done anything wrong
    • You let that person lead, if they want to. You may not get everything you want, but you'll get something. Don't lead their discussion
    • Defer to psychologists, therapists, etc. who have more experience with this. If a person opens something up, could make sure they close it after, practice mindfulness, try not to leave people in the state they got to during the session
  • How can Ample learn more about codesign?
    • Inclusive Cities (cities.inclusivedesign.ca)
    • Useful tools and methods are available there
  • Certain services are only available if you qualify for them based on age, gender, sexual orientation, etc. How do you ask for that in a respectful way?
    • Don't use services that try to determine this information based on anything like name or anything else
    • Could just present the information you have with the eligibility criteria embedded and let the user choose themselves rather than restrict what's available
    • Good not to do it if you can avoid it
    • What the chatbot is doing makes this difficult to determine
    • Maybe before beginning the chatbot session, ask the user to fill out a pre-screening survey.
    • Make sure to include options like "prefer not to say"
    • Instead of asking up front, list the searching info and then allow the user to narrow it down based on various criteria
      • Or follow up with filtering questions
      • Maybe this filter can be stored
      • Maybe it doesn't need to be stored!
      • Ask before storing it
      • Store it in a cookie which is client-side only and not on a server
      • Not storing it on a server may alleviate privacy and data security concerns
      • Make it clear what is stored where
  • They meet in person at Civic Tech on Tuesday evenings and Sunday afternoons
  • Amplelabs.co, they have the people they're looking for at the bottom of their website
  • Would partnering with the IDRC be an option?
    • They met with Jutta to show her a beta version, still need to follow up
• Accelerator
  • Program, not a product
  • Working with a local charity
  • Through their research, found that a lot of programs don't deal with homelessness from a prevention perspective
  • There's a lot of stigma around marginalized youth
• Question: are there any plans for figuring out how organizations and charities could use this?
  • There's a feature called "Add a new resource", which is in beta
• The tool is open source and on GitHub