The 2015 fellowship team going through notes from interviews and looking for themes
00 Introduction
In 2015, I was part of a summer fellowship with Blue Ridge Labs, an social impact incubator that is part of the Robin Hood Foundation. The fellowship is for mid-career developers, product managers and designers to trailblaze social innovation using technology and design. Throughout the summer, we designed and built products collaboratively with underserved communities. My group was specifically focused on possible tech interventions for individuals working in the informal economy — the part of an economy that is neither taxed, nor monitored by any form of government. Typically, this manifests itself in the ‘under the table’ jobs and pay.
01 Research
The formal research period of our fellowship last about 4 weeks, during which we, both individually and as a group, interviewed over 50 people. The research was fundamental to building empathy with and for our potential users, understanding our users fully, seeing the possible areas of technological intervention and validating any initial ideas. Beyond this research-focused period, we still conducted about 10-15 interviews for further insight, validation and usability testing on our formal app.
02 Key Discoveries
We settled on the idea of trying to formalize under-the-table work situations and focused on the restaurant industry as an initial test area, due to the amount of interviewees that cited restaurant work, both formal and informal, as a means of income. Once we decided that was the general area, we also conducted interviews with small to mid-size restaurant managers.
Discovery #1: We learned that when a dishwasher, busser, waiter, or bartender was unable to make a shift, often it was the manager or owner who had to step into that person’s role. Skills, and often payment schemes (tips vs. hourly wage) were unique to each position, meaning that instead of having an extra waiter take over for the dishwasher, the manager had to spend the evening in the kitchen instead of managing the floor. This type of role replacement was often very disruptive.
Discovery #2: While workers loved the idea of an app that offered a way to find shift-based work, they were weary of any potential discrimination. The app would rely on managers reviewing potential available workers and workers wanted more guarantees they were evaluated purely on their skills and past work. This informed the design decisions around the worker profile.
Discovery #3: Providing a framework to find and sign up for consistent side work would greatly benefit many people. Unlike Uber or Lyft, we envisioned workers not simply being 1099 employees, but W2 workers, with all the legal protections entitled to those workers. Finding something reliable for the months when extra money is needed would greatly reduce the emotional stress that many in the city go through often.
Discovery #4: Many of the workers we spoke to didn’t necessarily have resumes on hand. The idea of creating a resume was intimidating to them and it was something they tended to avoid if possible. If our app could support the creation of a digital resume, through easy options and programmed sentences, it would provide a valuable service.
03 Prototypes
An employee building a resume with auto-generated sentences
A ‘personality’ section of the app, designed to show potential employers of strengths and attributes
An example of the anonymous profile
A restaurant landing page for a worker to see pertinent information and accept or decline shift
