eMOTIVE

The Design Problem
CHI 2008's student design competition problem was to design an object, interface, system, or service intended to support the state of living without a house.

Our Approach
Volunteers are crucial to homeless aid. In our interviews with the Shalom Center's Executive Director and volunteer coordinators, a daytime resource center for people experiencing homelessness and poverty, 80% of their current workforce is composed of volunteers. Through our research we found a growing problem with homeless agencies failing to address volunteers needs that stems from motivational issues. This in turn negatively affects volunteer productivity and retention, directly affecting the homeless population. This project was aimed to improve volunteering matching for volunteer agencies that assist rural homeless populations.

Once we identified the design space, our team began concept formation. We used Bill Buxton's concept generation and convergence approach, as we gathered more insights from volunteer coordinators and liaisons for local non-profit agencies.

Our Solution
Organizations have volunteer positions that require special skill sets and requirements (ie. GED tutors, instructional volunteers, legal professionals). Often these "special" and important volunteer positions are difficult to fill. eMOTIVE will allow homeless agenices to actively and objectively view a potential volunteer pool for these type of positions.

eMOTIVE is a web-based tool that utilizes social networks to accurately match the skills and motivations of volunteers with organizations that are in need of their services.