Kevin Wu

Shelter4Youths: A Smartphone App Design

Shelter4Youths is a smartphone application on providing the homeless youths of the Greater Toronto Area with important information on shelter services, support programs, and more. These are some of the key features and key pages. Additionally, the screens in the User Interface flow illustrates the paths the client may take when onboarding with and navigating within the app.

“This was a collaborative project with my classmate, Jasmine Jiang.This project was inspired by a similar app design project in which I was involved, at St.Michael's Hospital. I wish to give a huge thanks to Dr. Flora Matheson at Unity Health Toronto for being the inspiration and mentor to many of my works.There is a gap in knowledge on Youth Homelessness in the context of COVID19. Through our research, we suggested potential design interventions via a mobile app that can reduce youth homelessness by referring the device-holding homeless youths to a nearby shelter, support service or a temporary housing service. One of the root causes of youth homelessness has always been the lack of housing-related support, affordable housing, and the app was designed with that primary function in mind; referring youths to nearby shelters so they have a place to stay for the night. The secondary function of this app is that this online platform will be a supportive application to enhance one’s meaningful connections to others. With various housing services, support communities, and networks, the app hopes improve the quality of the lives of homeless youths and precariously housed youths who decides to download this app in their smartphone devices. Another goal we hope to achieve with this app is that we hope this app fits nicely within the design narrative of fostering good mental health and social connectedness. The app offers referrals to social support programs, job trainings and other benefits to homeless youths, at locations all over the Greater Toronto Area. This way, homeless youths could promote positive mental health images and improve coping skills by developing social connectedness through their use of smartphone devices and social apps. Thus, good social relationships can also lead to more positive social supports, which can help homeless youths generate a sense of well-being and resilience in difficult times.”