#ixd502

[calumdixon]

This essay will explore what homelessness is and analyse the negative and positive effects that the information age has had on homeless populations in the UK. This will be achieved through the use of case studies, examples include, how Airbnb is driving up rent prices leading to homelessness and how the use of digital identities such as MyPass give homeless communities faster access to health and social care. These case studies will explain how technology has potentially contributed to the UK's rising homeless populations and how it has affected the lifestyles of those experiencing homelessness.

Dissertation Website Build

Using the designs I created as reference I set to work building my dissertation website. Throughout the process I applied some of the new techniques I learnt while on my placement year at Whitespace, such as using scss to built my website instead of standard css, which made managing much larger stylesheets much easier as well as having a better grasp on simple javascript meaning so i could easily implement the menu that I had planned, in comparison I had created a menu similar in year 2 for my Heroes and Villains project but it was much more difficult to build at the time. 

[calumdixon]

Dissertation Site Design

Created with Figma

Dissertation Site Design

With my essay writing wrapping up I started to work on the design of my dissertation website. I wanted the site to be pretty simple since the essay content should really be the focus on the website, although I did still want to have a theme throughout. What I decided to go for was a grungy aesthetic that makes use of black, white and yellow. The reasoning behind this was that scrap paper and gritty textures used throughout help build an image that reflects what homeless life is like, you could even imagine that the images were paper scraps found on the streets. The reasoning for my colour palette choice is that I felt that my essay’s message was a warning of the dangers technology can pose to homeless communities and as such I thought yellow was a fitting colour since it is often used on warning signage, or as a stop gap between green for good and red for danger. 

[calumdixon]

Every little helps — Micro Donating and the Charity Sector

Spare change is something we rarely think about, if we see or drop a penny on the street we are likely to ignore it. This way of thinking…

Content Design - Every Little Helps

The first blog piece I’ve published under the giving report centres on the usefulness of micro-donations in helping raise money for charities and what could be done to improve the method.

There will be more to come in the future I’m thinking of publishing to the blog either monthly or biweekly.

[calumdixon]

How homelessness can happen to anyone and everyone

While many of us consider homelessness to be a very foreign experience that is unlikely to affect them, the reality is that most people are far more likely to become homeless than they realise. The majority of people are close to becoming homeless than they are to join the 1%.

We know that this is the case thanks to studies such as those done by Shelter which revealed that almost 3 million private renters in England could be only one pay cheque away from losing their home, this situation is looking especially bleak for family households with the study finding that this could account for 60% of all working families. It becomes easy to understand how this can be the case when a large portion of working households can’t afford to build savings because of stats such having to on average spend 41 % of their monthly income on rent, on average 63% of households don’t have any savings. 

The people in these figures are barely surviving it would only take one unfortunate event to potentially destroy their livelihood, a loss of employment would be devastating to households in these positions. It’s easy to see how household in these positions are in danger but that isn’t to say households with savings aren’t either for example in Virgina Eubanks Book “ Automating Inequality” she introduces the book with her own experience of insurance red-flagging, essentially after having just joined a new health insurance plan they had a household accident leading to claims in the thousands and having just joined an algorithm had decided to flag their claim as insurance fraud, even if an issue like this eventually becomes resolved the time it takes to resolve it might mean that it is already too late.

Shelter

The Independent

[calumdixon]

Income inequality and homelessness are rising in the UK

It was reported by the organisation Shelter in 2018 that there are roughly 320,000 people experiencing homelessness in Britain roughly equating to 1 in every 200; This is a rise of 13,000 people from the previous year. This issue is not evenly distributed with areas such as London accounting for 170,000 of the country’s homeless population roughly equating to 1 in every 52 people in the city living in a state of homelessness. On top of this there has been a reported shift in the types of homelessness, rough sleeping has reported risen by 141% since 2010 and the number of households has increased throughout parts of the UK including a rise of 60% in England. 

Overall the homeless crisis in UK seems to be worsening in most aspects each year, and with the recent coronavirus pandemic I would expect to see increases comparable with the 2008 recession although it’s still to early to find any data on this as the pandemic is still on going.

A major contributing factor to this rise in homelessness is the increasing income inequality across developed nations in the world. The share of households in the middle class has dropped by 3% between the 1980s and the 2010s, which sounds insignificant but on a country level scale is an enormous change. Worse yet this issue seems to only be worsening with the ONS (Office of National Statistics) reporting that the richest 10% of households in the UK share 45% of the national wealth while the poorest 10% share only 2%, and to top things off this disparity is increasing rapidly with the same report claiming that the wealth of the 10% of richest households is increasing at four times the rate compared to that of the 10% of poorest households.

The rise of income inequality is a multi-faceted issue from the increase in asset wealth caused from increasing housing prices to CEOs and other high level executives assigning themselves hefty bonuses to offset the deprecation of the £GBP. Although what we can know for certain is that as income inequality continues to rise we can expect to see the same for homelessness across the nation and unless something is done we can expect to see larger homeless populations in the future. 

Sources

ONS

The Guardian

Shelter

Homeless.org

Gerry McGovern

The Guardian 

[calumdixon]

The “Airbnb effect”

One of the most glaring examples of how technology has impacted homelessness across the world is the rise of Airbnb, or more so the effect that Airbnb has on places where it becomes successful. 

What is the Airbnb effect?

The Airbnb effect is the term that has been used to describe the effect that the online lodging giant is having on local housing marketings within cities across the world, the problem being that Airbnb is contributing to rising rental and house prices across the world

Housing markets coined the term “Airbnb effect” after it was revealed that Airbnb was contributing to rising rental and home prices across the cities in cities which were seeing a rise in the number of Airbnb listings. A study found that for every 1% increase in number airbnb listings in an area there was a related 0.018% increase in rental prices and 0.026% increase in housing prices. Which while not sounding like very much it quickly adds up to significant sums, for example Inside Airbnb found that New Yorkers are paying $380 more on rent each year due to reduced housing supply induced by Airbnb. rent in Each new lodging opened on Airbnb is also a potential home taken away from prospective renters or home owners.

A secondary issue is that with an increase in tourist populations in an area, is that face of business in these areas change to reflect this new influx in tourism, for example Sito Veracruz, an urban planner for Amsterdam has commented on how he has seen local businesses such as grocery stores be replaced by bike rental stores or other tourist focused companies. 

Sources

Forbes

The Guardian

Inside Airbnb

[calumdixon]

How I am organising myself

In Chris’ lecture today we had past graduates come and discuss how they organised themselves during their final year project. Different approaches such as the use of checklists and kanban boards were discussed as options that could be used. Ultimately different methods work for different people but I thought it would be a good idea to show how I’m organising myself throughout final year.

Since the beginning I have been using a kanban boards for both ixd501 and ixd502 that has a 5 columns, Icebox (for tasks which can’t be started yet), To Do, Doing, Done and Blocked (for task which are in progress but can’t be continued). These tasks are the further sub-divided into epics to make it easier to understand what type of task each task is. I subdivide my tasks into the following epics: Research, Content Design, Wire-framing & Prototyping, Organisation & Planning, Branding and Development, alongside these I also include a final tag labelled ongoing task which can be applied to tasks that will be occurring throughout the entire project lifecycle.

Alongside my kanban tracking, I’ll be storing any product documentation and document links I create in a product wiki within my notion as well. This is to act as method of easy access for any product documents eg: figma files, google docs, etc. As well as any supporting written documentation outside of external docs.

[calumdixon]

Deciding on a dissertation topic

I have decided to go with the concept of homelessness for my dissertation as well as my final project. The working title I’m going to start with is “Technology's role in the landscape of present and future homeless society?” although this will likely be refined and altered as the scope and content of the dissertation changes over time.