About
Village is a project that confronts Chicago South/Westside communities and public trust issues. The project aim to break the cycle of distrust by bring positive impacts on youth development, and we have created a platform that connects Chicago teenagers to people who wants to offer guidance and spread the excitement of a topic or field.
Problem Statement
"How might we build public trust by bring positive impact to community youth development?"
Duration
Feb.2021 - May.2021
Team members
Siyuan Ma, Zach Cabana, Becky Marshall, Yi Peng
Design tools
Sketch, InVision, Adobe Illustrator
My role
Strategic planning, ethnographic research, visualization, and prototyping
A platform that forges new connections of trust to help
whole community raise children up right.
System recommend events and connection based on user’s profile (interests, school information, location and existing connections).
Connect with community members who offer guidance and spread the excitement of a topic or field.
Join and mark community approved event with trustworthy people.
Chicago is facing a lot of issues around community trust and public safety, especially on South/Westside. Rampant gang activities and intense relationship between community and first responders create a toxic environment for youth development.
Public schools and communities are lack of education resources.
Although parents are always doing the best they can, often times, they are lack of time, money or capabilities to take care of their children.
Chicago has over 100,000 gang members and teenagers are often involved in violence incidents.
Police-community relation in Chicago, especially South/Westside is intense and uncooperative.
To understand the context around teenagers, our team interviewed social workers, former detective, college students, and we interact with teenager at an after school art program, in exchange, we became figure models for them.
Teenagers from south/westside lives in an environment where crime is rampant, and police/community relation is confrontational. Meantime, resources for youth development are extremely limited due to low income and low education of parents, and relatively isolated communities.
Teenagers from south/westside lives in an environment where crime is rampant, and police/community relation is confrontational. Meantime, resources for youth development are extremely limited due to low income and low education of parents, and relatively isolated communities.
A platform that forges new connections of trust to help
whole community raise children up right.
Village bridges teenagers with existing distributed resources by creating a “village” model of support around them
Steve is a 16 year-old high schooler. He is a Starwar fun and loves robots. But everyone in school call him a nerd and he has no one to talk to.
Through Village app, Steve found out Kevin, a neighborhood volunteer he met before, has a degree of mechanical engineering in UIC and is holding a robot interest group.
Steve went to the event that Saturday in community center and learnt a lot about robotics from Kevin, and Kevin told him he can come every weekend because the UIC is funding the interest group.
From Kevin, Steve also found out that UIC is having a robotic competition this summer and Kevin encouraged him give it a try.
Village starts by utilizing existing resource of community. Groups of interests are formed by existing social workers, community volunteers and other excited individuals to help teenagers build up knowledge and share experience.
Village begins on-boarding more people who can help teenager foster career vision, it also forms partnership with other organizations to support youth development.
Village start to influence community in a larger scale, systems also use data collected via Village to create new services and to improve existing ones.
