Who is GLIDE & what do they value?
GLIDE is a social organization in San Francisco's Tenderloin neighborhood that confronts institutional injustice and supports people with an array of services who are experiencing poverty or a crisis. Glide strives to create a radically inclusive, just, and loving community that focuses on alleviating suffering and breaking the cycles of poverty and marginalization. One of the many services GLIDE provides the community is through free meals and COVID testing during the pandemic.
Stakeholder's/Users Painpoints
GLIDE's acupuncture service is a much-needed weekly therapeutic pathway for people in the scope of pain and in dependency recovery. During the pandemic they were forced to relocate to a small space in an alleyway outside of the GLIDE building. The acupuncture service hit many hurdles while re-opening. The two largest issues to solve were getting the word out about the service returning and rebuilding trust for clients.
Service Design Approach
As a small team of interaction/graphic designers from CCA we set forth the early stages researching the infrastructure and components of the acupuncture service in order to improve its quality, and the interaction between the service provided & users. By rebuilding the trust and relationships with clients demonstrating how acupuncture can help ease pain by fostering a comfortable, healing space for clients to return to on a weekly basis. Ultimately the outcome will achieve a goal of improving the health and lives of the Tenderloin Community while underscoring GLIDE's mission.
To successfully highlight the GLIDE acupuncture service's goal the end result was a culmination of many interviews and research to help find a positive experience for the user. Through countless information using pain point analysis, service blueprints, and storyboarding techniques the service grew legs and a number of tools were fashioned to make the service more enjoyable. An app to keep records was created for the check-in of clients which also consisted of prior client information to use for a faster check-in process. Print ephemera was produced and handed out with the lunches to alert GLIDE patrons of the acupuncture service.
A circular empathy map was created internally to help convey and signify the many alternatives a client may traverse to take advantage of GLIDE's other services, while also following the path of the emotional journey a user may experience. The prototype of the application was delivered to the client and received an eye-opening positive response to the issues they have faced with using only paperwork in the past.
After all the research was analyzed an important need that was previously overlooked had presented itself. An added recommendation, "Relaxation Station" mockup was crafted. The goal was to offer the client a relaxing space to recoup energy levels after the acupuncture service was completed while considering, and carefully staying in bounds of an extremely small budget cap. This finding was the result of many interviews with clients who seemed physically depleted after their acupuncture journey.
