Published on | Prototyping: From UX to Front End — Medium Madelyn Taking notes while my teammate naps behind me

In the middle of the semester, I lived homeless for a week

The Montreal streets are no picnic in March. If intermittent snow flurries don’t deter you from staying outside, add arctic winds to the mix and see how long you last. But the option to take shelter isn’t one shared across the board. Spend enough time walking about in nearly any major North American city and you’ll lock eyes with the frank evidence sooner or later (provided you don’t avert your gaze).

The situation is particularly dire in my neighborhood next to central metro stop, Berri-UQAM station. Walking to and from the metro every day, I see a lot of the same faces. A chubby old woman with tight silver curls, clutching a worn Tim Hortons cup. A middle-aged man leaning against the wall for hours on end with his hands behind his back, stoically watching the ceiling. I see them and I wonder how it all came to be. I wonder what it’s like. How to fix it.

As a design student, this problem-solving mindset is difficult to turn off. I know I can’t address every issue in sight, but that doesn’t stop the nagging voice in my head urging me to at least try to understand the problem. An opportunity to explore the issue of homelessness came a few weeks back when one of my professors introduced our final project. We were to design an object for sale in a pop-up shop from which all proceeds would benefit local homeless shelters. In addition, we were tasked with incorporating an element of community engagement with a shelter into the project. Speakers from Chez Doris and St. James, two day centers in the city, delivered lectures to inspire us. If we weren’t designing directly for the homeless, our concept still had to relate to homelessness in some way.

When my professor mentioned 5 Days for the Homeless, the name wedged itself into my brain and stayed there until I looked it up. Founded in 2005 by students at the University of Alberta, 5 Days for the Homeless is an annual fundraiser that calls for students to spend the week sleeping outside while canvassing for shelters. From the official website:

A chance to gain empathy around an issue I know little about, but am now being asked to design for? Sign me up. With little warning spared to my roommates, I packed up my pillow and left.

My bedroom for the week

Fundraising takes high spirits, and high spirits take community support

A lot of people expressed concern when they heard we were sleeping outside, my mom included.

“You should be prioritizing your grades and your health!” she yelled at me over the phone. “You don’t know what you’re getting yourself into, sleeping out on the cold concrete!”

“We sleep on cardboard,” I cheekily replied. And really, sleeping was the easy part. It was canvassing that was hard. Beginning Sunday evening around 6 p.m., every waking moment spent not in school was dedicated to canvassing. At the start, that meant asking pedestrians for spare change. Further along, it evolved into perfecting the pitch so I could shout it in the metro while countless people milled about. Towards the end, it took the form of playful gimmicks with signs or dancing outside car windows. When it comes to asking for money, humour is key.

My amazing teammates

A very tangible lesson I learned from this experience is how to handle it when you don’t have money to spare. Honestly, you don’t have to donate to help the cause. Simply smiling does worlds for energy and morale.

If you can’t give money, politely decline.

If you don’t feel like speaking, smile and nod.

If you’re not up to smiling, eye contact is still better than acting as if the person is invisible.

I used to feel uncomfortable when I locked eyes with a beggar. I didn’t want to smile because I felt awkward expressing positive emotion in response to another’s misfortune. It seemed to me like smiling was only appropriate if I was helping the person by giving them money. Knowing what I know now, I can vouch for smiling as an end in and of itself. Smiling helps because for that brief moment, you’re relieving someone from the painful feeling of being ignored. You’re flashing an image of support. At the very least, you’re acknowledging them. It might not seem like much, but it means more than you know.

Despite trying conditions, I was in high spirits consistently throughout the week. I attribute this to the sense of solidarity I felt sleeping and canvassing alongside the same group of people every day, and the outpouring of support from friends and strangers alike.

Woke up to this message scrawled on a cookie next to my sleeping bag

Although we weren’t allowed to eat unless people brought us food, hunger was rarely a problem. In fact, we had such an abundance that our post turned into a pop-up food bank for actual homeless people. I was grateful for this, because while many of the homeless expressed support for our cause, some pointed out that they personally had nothing to gain from our efforts. All proceeds were going to Dans La Rue and Chez Doris, two organizations that serve at-risk youth and women in poverty. Men over 25 were conspicuously excluded.

“Dans La Rue, Dans La Rue, Dans La Rue!” shouted one man in the metro, sick of me infringing upon his business. “Dans La Rue is for kids! They can’t help me!”

When conversing with the homeless, I listened

Easily the most interesting part of this experience was getting to interact with the local homeless population.

Giovanni, a bearded man with ice-blue eyes, no gloves, and bags full of stuff, recounted his recent meal at the student-run Hive Solidarity Cooperative Cafe. Hive has a pay-it-forward program that allows patrons to pay for someone else’s meal in advance. “I claimed a burrito, bought a tea, and paid for a brownie for the next guy.”

Angel, tattooed head-to-toe with a loose, jerky gait, paused while passing our post. “You’re raising money for the homeless? I’m raising money for crack!”

Cackling. Angel went on to say that he didn’t even really enjoy the drugs anymore, but continued to use them because they helped with the cold. I asked him about his experiences with shelters, and his voice turned scathing as he described the bedbugs, lice, and general lack of hygiene. Angel had a lot of ideas for how shelters could be improved, such as modeling them after hostels with inexpensive rooms and lockable drawers.

Angel’s criticisms of shelters were shared by Giovanni and many others I spoke to throughout 5 Days. The prospect of picking up lice at a shelter just “adds another problem,” said 28-year-old Jeff. Jeff also recounted horror stories of trying to sleep amid noises of sexual activity, but being unable to leave because of strict shelter policies.

Jeff slept at our campsite the second night and stuck around for days after to help us canvas. While I sat and wrote in my notebook, he wrapped his scarf around me and took up an umbrella to shield me from the snow. His story, like that of many other homeless people, was one of addiction, but before the addiction came the trauma of growing up in an unstable, abusive household. Jeff’s dad introduced him to drugs at a young age in between father-son fishing trips and alcohol-fueled beatings. When teachers finally noticed Jeff’s injuries, social services contacted his dad to inform him that they’d taken his son into custody.

“Yeah? Well you can keep him!” Jeff’s dad replied before hanging up.

Despite the rough start, Jeff wasn’t always homeless. In fact, he’d had a job and a family only eight months earlier. When Jeff’s girlfriend broke up with him, the split triggered a relapse into alcoholism, which spiraled into a DUI that landed him a month of prison time. He lost everything overnight. Still, a glimmer of hope remained: with his father’s recent diagnosis of liver cancer, Jeff’s dream to quit drinking had become an imperative.

“I went to my first AA a couple weeks back,” he told me. “I always thought it was a scam, but it was good.”

At his mother’s insistence, he was even patching things up with his father.

“People change,” he said. “Everyone deserves a second chance.”

Jeff frequently apologized for sharing the details of his life with me, no matter how much I assured him I wanted to listen. He expressed over and over again how happy he was to be fundraising with us, working towards something positive for once. When he called his mother to request a donation, she seemed skeptical of his story, so I agreed to accompany him to her workplace. Spotting us in our twin orange T-shirts, her pride was implicit.

Not every encounter was so uplifting. My first interaction with 47-year-old Christopher was unassuming. Around 10 in the morning, he hobbled up to ask what we were doing, and I learned that his limp was the result of being hit by a truck the night prior.

Holding up his paper cup, he told me, “You think this is coffee, but it’s beer. I drink every day.”

I asked him if he ever thought about stopping. He shook his head.

“It’s the only thing that helps with the pain.”

He wasn’t talking about the car accident. Christopher used to be a marine. His father had joined the US military, as had his son, who died in Afghanistan. Soon he’d launched into a graphic story about the violence he’d participated in while serving in Iraq, painting images of scenarios cable news doesn’t dare talk about.

It was half past 1 a.m the next time I saw him, slumped over against a wall and mumbling incoherently. A nearby security guard was summoning an ambulance. Concerned, I sat down with the intention of waiting by his side until the ambulance arrived.

“I can’t feel my legs,” said Christopher over and over again. Trailing off, his eyes glazed over and he fell into a seizure.

I’ll be the first to admit I’ve lived a pretty sheltered life. Up until that point, I’d never witnessed someone go red-faced choking on their own tongue before; never cradled someone’s head under the impression that they might be dying. To make matters worse, our presence caught the attention of nearby homeless people, who started yelling at us, convinced we were trying to harm him or otherwise make off with his stuff.

A pang of real fear hit me. Was this person going to die in my arms? Was I about to be blamed for it? My mom’s voice echoed in my head: “You don’t know what you’re getting yourself into.” Understatement. I don’t know the first thing about first aid, let alone self-defense. Luckily the situation deescalated, and the ambulance pulled up before I had to start reciting any prayers.

Paramedics loaded Christopher into the back, the doors clapped shut, and the security guard turned around to face me with a stern expression.

“You sit too close to them,” he reprimanded. “Don’t forget at any moment they can turn on you.”

It took me a few seconds to process what he’d said. Half-affronted, half-embarrassed, I said, “I’m sorry, but–” I seriously thought that guy was dying! “… he looked like he was suffering a lot–”

“Just be careful,” he reiterated, eager to remind me that for all my brazen actions, I was not a security guard, nor someone used to living on the streets. I was just a girl, and not even an especially capable one. Had the situation gone in any other direction than the one it did, I would’ve been completely helpless.

A lesson in humility

Truth be told, my team and I didn’t really live homeless for a week. We had expensive winter sleeping bags from MEC; real homeless people don’t. We had a guard keeping watch over us at night; real homeless people do not. We had endless support and encouragement from the greater community; real homeless people face judgment and discrimination every day. But 5 Days for the Homeless isn’t really about replicating the homeless experience to a T, nor is it about students helping people on the streets. It’s about building empathy for the plight of the less fortunate, and raising money for organizations that do know what they’re doing. Harm reduction, social services, and community-building are the rungs on the ladder out of homelessness. I have more respect for the work of Dans La Rue and Chez Doris than I ever could’ve gained from pure theory alone. Likewise, I might not know what it’s truly like to live without a home, but I do feel my participation has given me an inkling of understanding about how hard people on the street actually have it.

Did this experience make me a better designer?

I doubt it, though I suppose it depends on how you define “better.” Did it humble me? Yes. Do I feel less qualified than ever to be designing for the homeless? Yes.

That said, this headstrong personality is getting better and better at listening; a skill that’s especially important for designers. They say empathy is all about putting yourself in another’s shoes, but maybe it’s enough to look at the person wearing them and ask, “How do they fit? Could they be improved?” Almost all the people I met this week had feedback to offer on how the system had failed them, and how it might better be designed to meet their needs. We just need to listen.

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Method-Designing for the Homeless was originally published in Prototypr on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Method-Designing for the Homeless

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