System Potholes & Potentials

Mid-term elections are nothing new, nor are their possibility for affecting the outcome of the presidential or legislative agenda. When people change, the agenda may change, and ideas run the risk of disposal. That’s where civil society comes in – to boost or reinforce services that now have to support themselves.

 

My team’s issue of financial literacy falls prey to some of this. Right now, Bank on Greater Pittsburgh has the monetary support to continue for another year. Afterwards, the Urban League will be pressed to find alternative funding, if they can’t renew their grant from the city; to modify their program; or to let the program expire. With no centralized, organized body that is affiliated with the issue long-term to push forward the education program, it may disband. Even if it doesn’t, the new hands on the project may change its nature. New staff for BGP, new officials hired at the participating financial partners, new people at the community partners – this is all subject to change. And even if this isn’t so, programs always run the risk of institutional memory loss, meaning that they can fail to remember important things that they once learned, or tried.

 

At this moment, we’re still divided as to whether we’re going to provide recommendations to BGP on how to improve their media/community strategy, or their methods for ethnographic research, or whether we’re going directly to the user with a product.

 

Say we go directly to the user with a game or tutorial that shows them how to get out of the Chex system. There still may be a lack of recognition by our ideal user that he or she is in the Chex system, so this game wouldn’t speak to him or her. There may be shame that prevents an individual from looking at outside resources, or simply a general unwillingness. Furthermore, there may be a failure to discuss finances in the home, leaving future generations exposed to the same issue.

What does this mean for us? Well, tackling a systemic, inter-generational challenge is a real challenge. We knew this going in, and we knew it was going to be challenging. And it is!

 

But, on the upside, there has been community support for this in the past, as evidenced by BGP and certain commissions under Peduto’s administration. So, if there’s a time for change, it’s in this sort of climate, or future ones to come. We’re due to speak with a “financial issues support group” this week, and there’s always the possibility to meet an influencer, who can spread word-of-mouth interest in what we’re doing. There are always change agents out there; it’s just a matter of finding a couple, which takes time. But it’s the recipe for lasting change. We need ground-up community support, where individuals teach their families how to keep themselves out of debt, and neighbors influence their neighbors. The power of a positive example is here to stay.

 

Cheers,

Jennifer Baranoff

Team 5

The Long View

Much data has been collected since last time. We met with the Chairman of Bank on Greater Pittsburgh; spoke with the branch manager and the community development manager of a financial partner; visited two neighborhoods under consideration (Homewood and Hazelwood); and attended an info-session for community college students at the Allegheny campus of Community College of Allegheny County. At this last event, we spoke with the Director of the Office of Student Life, a couple participating banks (Northwest Savings and First Dollar), and a few students. It’s good to be out in the field.

 

Our conversations so far have been unstructured interviews. We come prepared with a few questions and figure out a few more along the way. This provided some meaningful contrast to the “fly on the wall” observation we did today. Katie and I perched ourselves at a table in the back (conveniently, the BGP table) to take a look at who came by, and how the event was set up. The financial literacy event took place in the form of a tabling session. We drew maps of the interactions between people and objects and looked at the flow of the room. I casually talked to the people standing next to me as I grabbed pizza at the refreshment table (research). We kept our eyes open, keeping AEIOU (Bruce Hanington) in the back of our mind.

We noticed a few things: there weren’t many signs inside or outside the building indicating such an event was happening. There were two planned hour-long lectures on savings and education that didn’t happen. (These were likely too long to begin with, and not clearly advertised). A few people stopped at multiple tables, and they tended to be over the age of 35. Most students floated about the room. More seemed to come in for just the pizza, which was located conveniently at the entrance/exit. Some already had bank accounts. In conventional terms, the event was successful: some of the banks enrolled a few new clients on the spot, including some non-banked ones. We asked ourselves, which table would we stop at, if we weren’t familiar with any of the bank names? Is the information on the table something I’d want to look at? There was a lot to look at. I’m thinking “Design for Attention Span,” and I’m thinking about moving the pizza to the other side of the room.

 

We expect the environment to be different at one of the next community college sessions. There won’t be a familiar meeting place on the Homewood campus, like there was here. There may not be a culture of regular programming, like there was here (every Wednesday, something is going on in right there).

 

As we continue our process, I look forward to applying new design research and data collection methods. We’ve identified several different directions we can take our project, based on gaps of all sorts, including communication, knowledge, and performance. We pooled all these needs together, and grouped them by type and time required. A number of potential deliverables resulted: a formal report, a monitoring and evaluation methodology, tangible resources (conformed to different users’ needs, e.g. BGP itself, financial partners, community partners, and end users). These will all benefit from the methods.

Certain methods (from IDEO Method Cards, etc) seem more appropriate for different stages of the process than others. We used character profiles last week to separate out different, relevant sub-populations, and then we contrasted their needs. An affinity diagram will be helpful in the next couple of weeks to synthesize our findings for the creation of an interface, system, or process. Once we have something tangible created, a cognitive task analysis and an error analysis are good usability tests. An activity analysis is helpful at this stage to detail the experience of walking into a bank, or interacting with a financial partner (say, at a tabling session, like today).

Those outside resources. One thing we keep talking about is how to extend the shelf life of our deliverables. We learned that funding ends Q1 or Q2 next year, so we’re thinking about suggestions we can provide to the Urban League that they can continue in the absence of funding. While I do not expect to find any silver bullets, I think it’ll be helpful to review some principles of psychology, adult education, and instructional design. Laura Meixell, the young Analytics and Strategy Manager for the City of Pittsburgh, continues to be a source of inspiration here. Be willing to teach yourself what you don’t know, be an advocate for positive change, be useful.

 

Oh, and my team is awesome.

— Jennifer, Team 5

Save Bank on Greater Pittsburgh, or combining Save PGH and Bank on Greater Pittsburgh

What is interesting, but unsurprising, about Peduto’s 100 policies is that there is something in there for everyone. After sifting through all 100, the entire class came into agreement around one fact: there were too many initiatives! Many of the policies overlapped and some could easily be folded into others for a more focused and less overwhelming campaign. However, to my original point, Peduto’s 100 policies succeeds in creating a dialogue for a change, and that is because there is at least one policy that resonates with every reader.

 

 

Peduto’s policy #80, Bank On: Building Stronger Communities through Financial Security, focuses on financial literacy, savings, and economic empowerment, areas that the individuals in my group feel strongly about and have touched upon in their earlier work experiences. We came together eager to work on an approach that would combat the endemic cycle of poverty and attempt to break it.

 

 

So, as a group, we surveyed existing financial literacy programs and identified a need for a central managing body, which was the same conclusion Peduto arrived at. As it is, there are some community-based organizations out there, who address this issue for different niche groups, but they leave the needs of families and individuals outside of those groups unaddressed. In policy #29, Financial Empowerment Centers: Helping to Build Self-Sufficiency and Financial Literacy, Peduto spoke of creating “Financial Empowerment Centers in their neighborhoods” to “pull these resources under one roof.” It makes sense to have a consolidated center that can be accessed by all interested parties. This center, reachable in person and by phone, would be available to connect willing users to a financial expert/social worker at a satellite location in their neighborhood. These satellite locations would be accessible at times during and outside of work hours, and they would cater to the most common financial needs of that community. We were overall pleased that our model agreed with Peduto’s, despite slight disappointment among a couple of us about the similarity on the surface level.

 

 

As noted in lecture, we realized the importance of paying close attention to existing systems to identify process stopgaps and needs, not only with regards to finding a point of entry for innovation, but to acknowledge what was already working, and why. We are completely uninterested in reinventing the wheel. Ideally, we would be able to drawn upon the strengths of existing financial programs and reuse and recycle a couple of these insights (one definition of innovation). So, at this moment, we are looking at process needs as our ‘source of innovation’ and adaptation and enhancement as our method.

 

 

Adapting insights from successful programs is certainly one way Peduto has gone himself. #80, Bank on, was inspired by a program of the National League of Cities, brought to Pittsburgh by the Urban League of Pittsburgh. #28, Save PGH: Creating a Culture of Financial Literacy and Responsibility, was inspired by SaveUSA, a program initiated by NYC officials to promote the habit of saving through a matching system.

 

Our focus for the semester, then is some combination of #28, #29, and #80. We’re relying on Peduto’s current focus on the area to mean that the timing is right. This has been a recurring theme in Design & Policy for Humanitarian Change, and a central one. Every good idea, every good solution, has to wait for its moment in time. Planners, innovators have to be graced with luck from above that their ideas come at just the right time in order to succeed. The factor of timing is one thing my team kept returning to when deciding what project to pursue, and how to best explore breaking the cycle of poverty.

 

 

Good timing means available funding, in addition to attention. United Impact Fund is supplying funding to Bank on Greater Pittsburgh as one in a long list of participating community partners. As part of the program, banks in several neighborhoods have dropped the fees associated with opening basic checking and savings accounts. There is already momentum behind this initiative.

 

 

We also have some luck with timing in a complementary area: neighborhood development. Mayor Peduto created two community-based programs, Office of Community Affairs and Bureau of Neighborhood Empowerment, that would strengthen the ethnographic research behind our suggested Bank on program well. They may also provide support for it, by hosting events or spreading the word of mouth.

 

 

The Community Affairs team has visited dozens of neighborhoods already, responding to constituent needs. This would be helpful information for us to know. The Bureau of Neighborhood Empowerment focuses on non-profit and faith-based initiatives, mixed-income housing, small business and workforce development, and high-quality education. The non-profit and faith-based and small business initiatives align with the goals of our program, too, and they may already be addressing financial-based issues. A mutually-beneficial, symbiotic relationship seems natural – financial empowerment would also benefit the economic development of these neighborhoods, and our goals seem to align with theirs.

 

 

Lastly, and most broadly, another fortuitous facet about the timing is Peduto’s whole culture of change. As reflected in the decision to pursue a partnership with the Brookings Institution, Peduto has committed himself to making Pittsburgh “a model of innovative and equitable development.” We see ourselves as part of that model.

 

 

We have a number of conversations in front of us with leaders and volunteers at community centers, faith-based initiatives, and non-profits; Kevin Acklin, Peduto’s Chief of Staff; Esther Bush, CEO of the Urban League; Howard Slaughter Jr, chairman of Bank on; Manager Grant Gittlen and Deputy Manager Lex Janes of The Community Affairs Team; and Dr. Curtiss Porter and Valerie McDonald Roberts, from the Bureau of Neighborhood Empowerment.

 

 

Through these conversations, we’d like to test the idea behind our system of a central body, satellite offices in neighborhood centers, and financial meetups in the same centers. These meetups are here to signify investment in the community, to provide a face to a name, to develop relationships and trust with participants, and to build a community of individuals who share the same mutual goal of moving forward financially. The meetups are here to take the scary, impersonal part of going directly to a bank for help away.

 

 

We’ll keep you informed of our progress!

 

– Jennifer, Team 5

Mayor Peduto on Meet the Press

Mayor Peduto on Meet the Press! He sits on a panel with the majors of Oklahoma City, OK and Tacoma, WA to talk about how they’re leading the charge to revitalize their cities without Washington’s help.

This is from September 7th’s Meet the Press (Chuck Todd’s first week as host). See 31:00+.

http://tvenbcnews.nbcuni.com/tve/show/Meet%20the%20Press/326230595817/0/Meet%20the%20Press%2C%20Set.%207%2C%202014

Enjoy, Jennifer