The Community Builders: Building a sense of ”Community”

Interview Community Partner Stakeholder

To understand Oakley Square Apartments community, the opportunities residents have for community engagement, and some of the barriers to community engagement residents encounter. We also wanted to clearly define the most important outcome for our solution. So we designed a semi-structured interview protocol. We met with our community partner and facilitated a 30-minute interview which we recorded and later transcribed.

Observing Community Events

Learn about how residents engage with community organizations in community spaces. So we observed a 90-minute weekly tutoring program for residents’ school-aged children, called Homework Help that is staffed by The Chicago School of Professional Psychology.

Focus Group With Senior Residents

We wanted to learn more about what causes adult residents to participate and not participate in community. We designed a small group activity protocol and facilitated a small group session with six senior adult residents. The session had three activities. We spent about an hour-and-a-half together and residents discussed how spaces at OSA affect their community; how interactions at Oakley Square Apartments affect their community; and one thing they noticed they like at other communities.

Interview Young Adult Residents

We wanted to learn about what causes young adult residents to participate and not participate in community. So we designed a semi-structured interview protocol & facilitated 60-minute interviews with three young adult residents between the ages of 18 and 30. Residents started by describing the time they lived at Oakley Square Apartments, their original reason for moving, and the last experience they had that made them feel both good and not so good about living there. They then described trust among residents and staff, help and reciprocity, shared norms, and organized community events. Last, they described the ideal community services and ideal neighbors.

Observing Bulletin Boards

We wanted to understand how residents learn about community events. Each of us observed a 30-minute period of residents’ interactions in each of the three building mailrooms where community bulletin boards are posted. And we asked probing questions of residents we interacted with.

Data Analysis: Coding And Theming

We wanted to find important actions, causes, and consequences in the 11 documents with 144 pages gathered from our research activities. So we used a qualitative coding technique based on grounded theory, analyzed our data together in six steps over three days, and wrote 149 codes.

Framing Design Principles

To revise our design principles and supporting insights and quotes based on the feedback we got from the Co-Interpretation Session with the residents & staff. So we did a couple more rounds of iteration and sent the ninth iteration to our Stakeholder Rose to get her approval of our interpretations.

Resident And Staff Co-Interpretation & Brainstorming

We wanted to arrive at a shared interpretation of our insights and themes with residents and staff before we advanced to design. Residents prioritized insights to discuss. We facilitated a conversation about each insight about whether it was true, whether it was important, what might be one cause, and what might be one consequence. We also had brainstorming sessions where we asked residents and management about what they think would work as solutions

Prototyping And Testing

We sketched out few paper prototypes and tested with residents/management. The feedback they provided helped us to refine and match their expectations.

OSA Magnets

Door Clips

Wall Mural

Wall Calendar In Lobby

SMS Alerts To Residents (Overseen by management)

Communicating With Email