Victorian Homelessness Crisis and its Stereotypes
The Challenge
How might we encourage community awareness of homelessness in Victoria?
We are often guilty of making assumptions and jumping into conclusions on the reasons for homelessness, neglecting the various visible and invisible aspects of this social issue.
The Outcome
With the agenda to,
understand everyday Victorian’s perception of homelessness
complete the first double diamond to determine the problem with how we are approaching homelessness
Cross-disciplinary Design Players were tasked to unravel the misconception on Homelessness. We curated games with scenarios and provocations to build empathy while exploring the problem space.
Why Design Thinking?
For a social crisis as such, we need everyday Victorians to be involved and more importantly, to empathise with the cultural, socio-economic impact and ramifications that this can have on our peers—this can happen to any one of us.
The idea is to encourage us to feel uncomfortable, and take a conscious step to understand that Homelessness is often an unfortunate, unintended consequence.
Using the Design Thinking Process, we are able to empathise with the experiential dimension of Homelessness.
Break down stereotypes through education and awareness campaigns
Through communicating personal, real-life experiences, we are able to challenge stereotypes and taboos, while building awareness and empathy on Homelessness.
Special thanks to our sponsor ThoughtWorks for kindly providing the venue and drinks.
Photo credit: Christyn Sau