A case of designing period products for homeless women as a real-world crowdsourcing service
perigives (Erin Song, Jae Who, Yitong (Cindy) Shen)
- Photo source: perigives
The designers released a poster that anyone can download and install. All someone has to do is put it up in a women's restroom.
People see the poster, donate spare pads, and those who need them can use them — an incredibly intuitive example of service design?
You sometimes see campaign banners on portals like Naver or Daum for distributing sanitary pads to teenagers. Of course, because of the enormous cost, you don't see them often. The banner design usually features a young girl as a model and a striking copy. Clicking the link takes you to the foundation's related page, which lays out in stark detail the pitiful, uncomfortable reality of these girls. And then, the logic goes: people who saw this, at least anyone better off than that, anyone with a conscience, should go through the link to the foundation's homepage, sign up as a member, go through public certification authentication, and transfer a set amount from their own bank account to the foundation — surely that's the "right?" thing to do. That's how typical donation flows work.
In this process, you have to pay for an expensive banner slot on a portal like Naver or Daum (or maybe it's a win-win where the portals can "launder" money under the name of donation). There are fees for the account transfer to the foundation, costs of producing that homepage, and then the procedure, cost, and time of using the donated money to purchase sanitary products. It's not over yet. There's still the process of distributing the purchased pads through delivery or in-person visits. Is that the end? In fact, a young girl had to make a big decision to appear in the ad, there are the people and costs to produce the video, and then the work, time, and related costs for promotional materials like posters.
Isn't it absurd? Just to hand period products to children in difficult circumstances, we end up with a belly button bigger than the belly. Ironically, enormous amounts of jobs and supply-and-demand get created in the process of helping these children. And the money and goodwill donated by ordinary people end up being donated under the name of a foundation. The individual disappears. Only the sincerity of the individual remains. And more than 50%? 70%? of that sincerity is used for overhead, with what's left going to the children. Of course, the details and sources of those overhead costs aren't disclosed. Even if they were, it's the reality that it could take at least two or three hours of searching and clicking through steps.
But these designers were different. There was no IT in their process, no unnecessary cost. They didn't take the lead themselves. They designed it so that funding could naturally and genuinely become social. The process between Back-Stage and Front-Stage is incredibly impressive.
This is what everyday UX is. This is what a designer is, isn't it.
Thank you to these people I don't even know. I share it here through this post out of gratitude.
