The following document contains a few drafts of intersections which led to innovations/layout choices. The green circle represents something we saw/was told at Fair Winds Manor the blue circle represents something we saw/were told at Charles Morris. The purple circle represents ideas we’ve developed from the comparison of these two observations, which we plan to include in our layout.
Osher Interview
Last Friday our group met with some Osher participants at their home. Although the participants did partake in our kits, we learned more from what they said verbally. Our participants were both 78 years old, a couple, and married for eight years. One was a social worker and the other was a computer engineer.
Some insights we took away were:
- The couple would like to live somewhere where they don’t have to move. They’re looking for a community where they can move up or down (in regards to the care needs) without having to switch facilities.
- Shirley spoke of the need for making residents more humanized in staff members eyes. She shared a story with us about her mother, who had been in a home and was referred to as “the woman in room 234”. Shirley said that staff need to recognize that their residents have a past life and they should talk about it with them to keep their memory going.
- Shirley also pointed out that women and men think differently about retirement. She claims that women expect the challenges of aging, while men think and plan less about it.
- Shirley also realized a gender difference in activities and amenities in homes. She stated that more activities and amenities need to be available for men. One idea she mentioned was installing pool tables.
- Both Shirley and her husband believed that access to technology in homes was a top priority. They believe that each room should have a Wi-Fi connection, that Skype centers should exist for residents, and that common computer clusters should be available.
- In regards to why community and amenities are so important, Shirley shared a story about a woman she met while volunteering in a home. The woman was reserving a table and seven chairs for lunch, although lunch was two hours away. Shirley made the connection that for this woman, this table and sitting with her friends, was the woman’s family and her only possession after giving up her home and life to enter the facility.
- Shirley also shared a story about when her mother died and she went to retrieve her possessions. Her mother’s possessions were in the basement and no longer in the room (even though it had only been hours since her death). Shirley used this an example of the lack of humanity in homes.
- Finally, Shirley and her husband made a few other suggestions: including a library with large print and audio books. She also suggested putting names on the door’s of residents.
Our group has started the designing layouts, brainstormed technological innovations, and determined how categories within the layout relate to our themes of dignity, health, and community.
Using the Matrix to chart growth
In class last week we came in with the 3×3 matrix filled in with names of six different prison gardens programs and where we believed they fit based on what we know about them. An insight we had while doing this is that none of the locations on this matrix are “better” or “worse” than others. A garden in the bottom left can be just as awesome as a garden in the top left or middle. All of these programs are hugely impactful, they just all have different levels of formalized partnerships. If you know anything about these garden programs that we might be missing, please let us know and we will update the location of the post-its! We placed our New Leaf Garden Project where we would like to eventually be. We think that with the partnerships we’re envisioning and the policy reforms we are considering, we’ll be able to change behaviors and shift attitudes. What really makes our project unique is that policy aspect, which we have not seen in other garden programs.
After we had this, Kristin encouraged us to think about how to use the matrix to chart growth. We thought about where the New Leaf Garden Project currently falls on this matrix. We then added the various stakeholders to the matrix that would help New Leaf move towards the upper right corner, which is where we eventually want the garden to be. Along with each of those additional stakeholders comes certain barriers, which aren’t included in the matrix. (The post-it above “us” says Prison Administrators, and the one next to that says Correctional Officers).
What the matrix provides us with is a plan for which stakeholders are most important for the early success of the garden. For example, we first need to have the prison administrators and correctional officers agree to the project before we can have the inmates be involved. Resource partnerships are more critical in the early stages than other types of partnerships, but those will be crucial in helping the garden grow into a sustainable agent of social, cultural, and economic change.
This matrix can also be used as a tool for tracking our progress as we continue. We can attach timeframes to each of these stakeholders. For example, do we want to have a resource partner on board in 6 months? 1 year? 2 years? This is a topic we’ll be discussing as a group in our next meeting. We will also be detailing the barriers that exist with the various stakeholders, and how we can reduce the “stickiness” of those barriers.
Our Concept Proposal!
Based on our prior research and our most recent rounds of interactions with the Hill District community, we have decided to focus our final deliverable for the course on this concept:
Concept
A location-based tool that helps non-residents understand the Hill District’s rich legacy, and painful past events that shape the neighborhood’s outlook today, by providing an easy reference to historical locations.
Goal
Enable Community members to collect their stories in a way that makes them easier to interact with both for them and for nonresident, in order to enable a richer dialogue between residents and non-residents.
Why location-based?
A lot of memories are tied to physical places, and it’s these physical places that the community has lost in the past, and is afraid of losing now.
When outsiders take away these places, they are taking away the community’s past and their connection to it. And because these things from the past were loved and valued, this throwing away of the past without due respect feels like a rejection of their values, and by extension a rejection of themselves and their worth.
How concept can fit into larger policy and community context
1. The more non-residents understand about Hill District they will base opinions and perceptions on the complexity of the past and present, and less on stereotypes and generalizations about the neighborhood.
2. Better mapping of history and priority can help development groups avoid stepping on toes unnecessarily, and know where they need to do additional community outreach work before moving forward.
3. Better mapping of history and priorities can help the community advocate better for themselves.
4. The more non-residents understand the Hill District, the more they will care about what happens there, and more allies helps soft power of the Hill District community. (Similar to how Mike Schiller argued that by getting people out on the river to kayak they would then have some familiarity with the river that would make them care more about clean rivers.)
5. This approach to preservation of history and legacy could pave the way for applying for historical status for buildings or districts, so that perhaps in the future buildings could be protected from egregious development by being covered by the PGH Historical Review Commission procedures.
Changing Neighborhoods Timely Tidbits
Historic Mapping tool
I came across this cool tool from a link by Public Allies. It lets you explore historic maps of Pittsburgh translated into digital form, something directly of interest to our project:
Gentrification in the News
Gentrification and the challenges of revitalizing neighborhoods is often in the news, but of late these articles have been catching my eye.
This longer piece speaks directly to a major issue at play in the Hill District – what happens to the history of a place as the place is changed, and the people begin to change? In this case the history of the place is a sad one – one remembered for a particularly bad street crime incident –
This article on the other hand, discusses a recent study that looks at why some cities are more gentrified than others –
Hill District Group Update
Based on the tour that our group attended, and from speaking with Ms. Baltimore afterwards,the team felt there was still alot more they needed to learn and understand to really be able to contribute internally to the Hill District community, and that it wasn’t going to be possible to fully grasp intricacies and nuisances of the vacant property issue in the time we have left to be able to contribute to the working group on that matter, as we had hoped to do.
While that was a bit disappointing, we did draft a new goal that we hope will still bring some value to the community, but which we will be able to work on from our outsider position.
New goal: Enable Community members to collect their stories in a way that makes them easier to interact with both for them and for nonresident, in order to enable a richer dialogue between residents and non-residents
Next we considered a few different possibilities for what this tool could look like:
Outputs: ways to share info
Idea: Non-resident “Orientation” Kit
Goal: Give non-residents a primer before visiting or working with the HD
Idea: iPhone geo-tagging
Goal: Location-based exploration for non-residents
Idea: Physical scavenger hunt
alt – physical walking tour with sights and stories.
Idea: Having history showcase / events to encourage non-residents to visit
Idea: Calendar of community events and resources
HD History Month – what could you see and do in a month
Idea: Tourism ambassadors (similar to Living Library – rent a person for oral history and understanding, gaining empathy, a UK thing)
Goal: Making the individual people that know the Hill more accessible to non-residents
Idea: Giant Community Bulletin / Chalk Board (maybe multiple checkpoints?)
More ideas:
Mini Museum Feed of volunteer opportunities / projects Documentary / play
Photo composite: then & now Audio Tour
Inputs – ways to contribute materials
Residents choose things to share
Postcard from Residents – what do you want to share with others
Residents make a time-capsule type collection of mementos and thoughts
Audio/photo – Input audio stories – maybe combine with geo-tagging idea?
UPDATES!- Prison Garden
Here are some updates on our project process. We have begun finalizing the features and steps within our service design. By creating storyboards of life pre and post garden program and unpacking the specific efforts of each. After taking a closer look at the story we were telling and getting feedback from the class, we decided to hone our focus to reducing recidivism and building skills for job placement after release. We found that the other aspects we identified in the storyboard could perhaps be implemented later in the project but the most important thing for us is to focus on trainin the inmates and placing them in programs so that they don’t return to prison.
We also began some visual explorations. It has been difficult to come up with an identity system for a program targeted at a men’s prison. While some of the concepts behind the sketches are interesting, they aren’t exactly appropriate for a men’s prison. Bruce pointed out that since the program is intended to grow beyond SCI Pittsburgh, that maybe the focus should be more on making the identity system gender neutral instead of targeted to men specifically. Any critique would be helpful.
Update & Next Steps
RESEARCH METHODS
To recap our research over the last couple of weeks:
1. Interviews at Andrew Street High School
We interviewed counselors and students on two different occasions at Andrew St. High School, which is a Propel charter school with about 200 students in grades 9-12. We asked the counselors some broad questions about student career decision-making and did a few card sorting activities. This provided valuable insight into the culture of “everyone-goes-to-college” at the high school, as well as insight about overtaxed counselors who are doing a great job taking care of juniors and seniors but who don’t always have time to help younger students. When we interviewed students, we brought three sets of storyboards that explained a few different concepts for a tool or service to support career decision making. We walked the students through the scenarios and got a lot of good feedback about what parts they thought were useful and which were less so.
2. Card sorting at SHIM
We spent an evening doing card sorting activities with 12 boys in 8th and 9th grades, at a program put on by the South Hills Interfaith Ministry. We interviewed the boys in pairs and had them do 3 different card sorting activities to prompt them to talk about careers they’re considering, resources that are helpful to them, and what factors are important in their future careers. One interesting insight was that boys who were in specialized electives at school (electronics, web design, etc.) were very interested in careers that related to those classes. On the other hand, some participants were dreaming of careers as professional athletes or the President.
3. Career Path mapping
We completed the career path mapping exercise with four adult participants, and we received a variety of interesting stories about the turning points, influences, and lessons learned as these adults got settled into their careers. The overarching takeaway was that, in the end, most of what they had learned came about during the experiences that occurred along the way.
4. Hanging probes at Andrew Street HS and Braddock Hills HS
We hung banners at two different high schools with open ended statements and blanks for student responses. The banners posed one of two statements: “After high school I will be…” or “I will figure out my job by…” After a week or so, we picked up the banners and examined the responses. The responses varied in originality and quality, but we were excited to see in at least one case that students were considering a variety of ways to figure out their careers (internships, job shadowing, etc.)
RESEARCH SYNTHESIS
We compiled the results of all of these research methods, plus insights we gained from literature and artifact reviews and the interview with Steve from the Neighborhood Learning Alliance. After sorting, categorizing, and synthesizing, we were able to establish some overarching themes.
- human interaction is needed
- lack of support available for self reflection
- lack of awareness of others’ career paths
- lack of long-term thinking
- balance needed between planning and exploration
- students feel overwhelmed and/or lack initiative
- negative influences exist in the lives of students
Based on these overarching themes, we did a round of brainstorming to come up with a number of quick concepts. They ranged from developing a digital tool for counselors to running an after school peer mentoring program to compiling a database of working professionals who would be willing to teach in high school classrooms. The policy implications included tying participation to the Pittsburgh Promise program, using dual enrollment or internships as student incentives, and lowering the student-counselor ration. We discussed the concepts, combined the ones that overlapped, and analyzed how well each concept addressed each overarching theme.
NEXT STEPS
We will be deciding on a concept in class tomorrow, then delegating responsibilities for the final deliverables.
Impact 2
Our previous posts have touched upon the feedback we have received from interviews, our research, methods, and goals. Currently, all of this is being used to build a prototype of the system we have been designing through research. Below are screenshots of the design iterations that our application website has gone through. For our final presentation, we will present our research findings and how they influenced the final system we design and how the feedback from our research can be seen throughout our application website.
Initial Site map (used for mapping out how the pages would connect to one another):
Iteration 1:
About Us
People Similar to You
Sign Up
Project Page
Profile Page
Home Page
FAQ
Dashboard
Contact Us
Advanced Search
Iteration 2:
Profile Page
Featured Project Page
Completed Profile Page
Project Connections Page
Dashboard Page
FAQ
Contact Us
About Us
Home
Next Steps for the Elderly Health Care Group
Our next steps are as follows:
- Interview on Thursday with Suzan Krauland, Geriactic Care Specialist
- Osher interviews/kits on Friday. We received an overwhelming amount of feedback and actually had to turn some participants away due to time constraints, the holiday interference, and the need to move forward and complete the design aspects of this project.
- Research of universal designs and codes
- Defining our five target areas (this will be done at Sunday’s meeting).
- Design, compile, and reflect!
Pictures from the Charles Morris Kits Visit
A Visit to a Rural Home
Yesterday, Prisca and I visited a rural home in Butler County.
The home itself was 58 years old and hosted 30 residents. Residents could chose to have a one bedroom, shared bedroom, or apartment, all of which attach to the main (long) hallway. Each room or apartment had its own bathroom and several of them have a porch or outdoor access. Residents in this home are allowed to go to the kitchen and order snacks 24/7. However, meals are generally a set menu. Residents wear call buttons that resemble fall buttons that are advertised on TV. This is helpful so that they are never too far away from a call button. However, I wonder how residents feel about having to wear or carry this buttons all the time.
Compared to our visits at Charles Morris, this home in-sourced several services and did not have designated facilities for them. For instance, they had their own pharmacist and medical director, but no facilities for them to use. Additionally, they offer “workout classes” but hosted them in a community room, not a gym or rehab center. Physical and occupational resources are imported to the home and w are under the assumption that these appointments take place in resident’s rooms. Several outings are offered to residents including trips to the movies, malls, etc.
Despite not having designated rooms for some of the above amenities, the rooms such as the dinning room and community rooms were much more aesthetically pleasing with large windows, natural sunlight, and home-like decor. They resemble some of the traits that Judy and Jerry spoke about when filling out our kits. However, there were several less desirable characteristics such as the long hallways with the dinning room at the very end and the nurses stations tucked away in corners.
Despite all of this, our host insisted that the layout of her facility was perfect and that she wouldn’t change anything. When asking her to do the card sort, she barely participated and said that amenities don’t matter, its the services that do. She said that if she was looking to put her mother into a home she would want to know “if her medical needs would be addressed…the staff ratio, etc.”. Even after explaining to her that we believe that services and how they are offered intersect with the layout of a facility, her opinion did not change. When asking her to take part in the design aspect of our kit, she once again could not imagine changes or an ideal other than what existed. However, she did state that has some concerns with layout in regards to fire safety, as she has been caught in a fire before. However, her layout had rooms lining each side of the hallway, the dinning room at one end, and the living/community room at the other.
This visit was a learning experience as we found that kits and design strategies do not work for everybody. Instead our insights were derived through our own compare/contrast exercises during the tour. Additionally, we obtained a useful artifact from this visit, which is a list of Pennsylvania Resident Rights.
(More pictures to come)
Testing our Kits with Residents of the Future
On Saturday, I ventured to Munhall to survey a few of my relatives using our creative kits. I started off by asking them how healthy they currently feel on a one to five scale. One is the worst possible score, five is the best possible score. Judy said that she feels like a three, while Jerrry mentioned that he felt like a four. When asking how they imagine they will feel in the next five years, both commented with the same scores that they previously gave. Although they are already retired, I asked them where they envision themselves in the future of their retirement. Jerry responded that he prefers one level living and that he would like “all the modern upgrades for safety in bathrooms and stairs”. On the other hand, Judy, mentioned that she would prefer a patio home or apartment, maintenance free living, a place geared towards seniors, and possibly somewhere warm. When asked how they think their lives would change if they had to enter a care facility, Jerry responded that it makes sense to do so when you can’t drive anymore. Judy stated that there are a lot of pluses to assisted living. However, she also commented that nursing homes need to be improved (citing her experience caring for our Aunt towards the end of her life).
While these questions were asked, many other comments were made regarding what comfort and amenities my family is looking for. Below is a list of amenities they would like to see:
- Fireplaces in common areas
- An outside sitting area
- Views of nature/outdoors/weather
- home-like, warm, and welcoming
- Windows with a nice environment outside
- circle layout, with an atrium on the inside of the circle
While describing these traits, a few key quotes came up. When Jerry was describing his ideal view he said, “I don’t want to be locked up in a little 8×10 room and not know anything”. Judy said, “The problem with nursing homes is that she shouldn’t be called homes at all. They feel like hospitals”.
Below are the results of Jerry’s card sort of priorities. As a reminder, the amenities are listed in order of importance, starting in the left column and moving down, then going to the second column and down, etc. The card that is written on says “Common area fireplaces” and “natural light”.
The following is Judy’s card sort. The first hand written card says “personal living space”. The second says “library/reading room”.
The next activity was the layout aspect of the kit. Jerry decided to use the kit to show the layout of his ideal room. While Judy used the kit to show the main floor of her ideal facility. Together they decided that resident’s rooms would be on the second floor and common areas would be on the first floor. Jerry noted that rooms should have a sliding door and balcony and should over look the outdoor areas below. The first thing that Judy did was to design the outdoor spaces and center courtyard. She wanted windows looking into the courtyard all around the main floor. Additionally she designed community rooms with fireplaces, and entry way to “sit and watch people come and go”, an outdoor area with a path leading to a pond, and a shared gym for active residents and those who need rehab. She also mentioned a pool, but then left it out due to “regulations”. While physically making the space, Judy once again said “Everyone should have access to windows”.
Below is a pictures of Judy’s design:
As you can see, Judy stuck with her circular design. The forward right square is activity room. To the left of it is the library, with a fire place. Behind the library is the entry way with places for residents to sit. Behind that is the community room and behind that (last block on the left) is the dinning room. Next to the dinning room is the gym/rehab center and in front of it is the place of worship. Finally, the last vertical block is the hair center and manicurist. The center area is an outdoor area/atrium with trees, chairs and tables. Behind the layout are a few chess pieces that represent the outdoor area with trails and benches that Judy talked about.
Next is Jerry’s ideal layout:
Jerry’s layout is of a private room for a married couple. There are two separate beds as marked by the purple blocks. Above those blocks are two loungers/chairs. There is TV at the bottom left corner. The bottom center are sliding doors to go onto the attached porch. The long blocks on the left side (and right) are shelves for photos and collectable items. The large block in the top center (which is slightly cut off in this picture) is the on-suite bathroom. Finally the round circles are other room decorations.
Having Judy and Jerry complete the kits reaffirmed what I hypothesized layout would look like–central and easily accessible for group spaces. Additionally, I imagined that aesthetic mattered and these two participants strongly backed this belief.
Project Update 11/19/2013
This past week, our team went back to Charles Morris Nursing Home to test our design kit. Included in a large blue duffle bag was an assortment of chess pieces, markers, Yahtzee chips, and index cards. Each had a purpose in creating an ideal nursing home for future elderly residents.
We met with Carol Danhires, the Activities Director for the home. She was an insider. Her job was to work with all the residents and staff to create a sense of community in the home. There was no one better to interview. She intimately knew the ins and outs of every corner. We sat down with her for an hour and a half, took a tour of the facility, and created a plan for a better layout of the home. Because of her daily interaction with staff and residents, she knew what needed improvement.
Some of the important points that she discussed included;
– There is no wheelchair access in the activity room
– Nurses cant see patients from their station
– Furniture needs to be updated to accommodate the needs of the residents
– A lot of wasted space
– There is no storage for residents
To be honest, these are things that I would have assumed were part of the package for nursing homes. Our host mentioned that 99% of their long-term patients are in wheelchairs. Bringing in furniture that accommodates wheelchairs would have an immediate impact. Creating nursing stations that have a clear line of vision to patients would also create measureable results. When we used our creative kit to the staff to design their ideal nursing home, they came up with the design shown below. The nursing stations are centrally located with circular paths flowing around them. Each side of the building would house residents of different abilities.
Basic Layout- details to come
This is a good start for our group. There were other aspects to the layout that will be added into our recommendations. We will have to compare the needs of urban and rural homes. Patterns are starting to emerge in our research that indicates which direction we should go. Many practitioners have expressed a desire for smaller, “more local” nursing homes. Moving away from the institutionalized approach would have many benefits, but lower the profit margin. As we move forward, it will be interesting to see the various preferences in home layout.
Hill District Neighborhood Tour – 11.16.2013
On November 16th, group members participated in a neighborhood tour of the Hill District coordinated by Terri Baltimore, the Vice President for Neighborhood Development at the Hill House Association, a prominent community organization in the neighborhood. Other participants included member of Public Allies Pittsburgh. The tour consisted of walking from the Hill House Association Headquarters (1835 Centre Avenue) down Centre Avenue towards Downtown, before turning around and heading back into the neighborhood to view more developments. Key physical aspects of the tour included the former Lower Hill neighborhood that is currently parking lot, the new Shop N Save grocery store, the Thelma Lovette YMCA, the Carnegie Library, the Legacy residential development, and associated local small businesses frequented by Hill District residents.
As useful as this tour was from a visual standpoint (i.e understanding interactions in the physical environment of the Hill District), we found that the true value was derived from the insight Ms. Baltimore provided what we could not see: the complex interactions between stakeholders in the Hill District, and just how large a role the historical context of the neighborhood plays in the structure of these interactions. Examples include the entire Lower Hill District neighborhood being removed to provide space for the Civic Arena, the removal of Eddie’s (local eatery) to renovate the Carnegie Library, and the installation of the Thelma Lovette YMCA.
This tour allowed our group to gain insight into just how complex the interactions between stakeholders in the Hill are. This includes interactions between neighborhood organizations (at the Hill District Consensus Group) as well as the interactions between the Hill District and outside entities (The City of Pittsburgh, the URA, the Pittsburgh Penguins organization). It also struck us that as CMU students, we are one of these outside groups that interacts with the neighborhood. We had whittled the scope of our project down to formulating a strategy for community interaction with the Hill District Vacant Property Strategy, in order to gain useful and productive community input on the technical recommendations within this report. This tour allowed us to view several of the actual physical vacant lots and properties, but more importantly it gave us a view into what is not physically visible in a neighborhood, and how this history shapes the interaction between the Hill District residents and various stakeholders.
Design and Policy 