extended-abstract

Elevate: Ensuring Access to Food for Homeless Populations

Authors:

Nisha Mohan,

Abhraneel SarmaAuthors Info & Claims

CHI EA '17: Proceedings of the 2017 CHI Conference Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing Systems

Pages 80 - 85

https://doi.org/10.1145/3027063.3049274

Published: 06 May 2017 Publication History

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Abstract

We present a text-message system that increases access to hot meals for homeless populations. Homeless people in the USA face several challenges, a crucial one being food insecurity. Through contextual inquiry, we found that although the homeless community is aware of various sources of free food, most of the information is spread through word of mouth. This leaves knowledge incomplete, inconvenient for those on the move, and difficult to remember. We address these issues with a system that allows homeless users and their supporters to update and receive notifications about locations serving free hot meals in a given area, using technology they already have access to their (often non-smartphone) mobile phones. The system was prototyped, and an initial round of testing was completed with a homeless community in southern Michigan.

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References

[1]

Julie Hersberger. 2001. Everyday information needs and information sources of homeless parents. The New Review of Information Behaviour Research: Studies of Information Seeking in Context, 2: 119--134.

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Julie Hersberger. 2002--2003. Are the economically poor information poor? Does the digital divide affect the homeless and access to information? Canadian Journal of Information and Library Science, 3: 44--63.

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Christopher A. Le Dantec. 2012. Participation and Publics: Supporting Community Engagement. In Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '12), 1--10.

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Anuyah OConrado ACarlson CGilbride HMetoyer R(2023)Exploring the Barriers and Potential Opportunities of Technology Integration in Community-Based Social Service OrganizationsACM Journal on Computing and Sustainable Societies10.1145/36107201:1(1-28)Online publication date: 22-Sep-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3610720

Index Terms

Elevate: Ensuring Access to Food for Homeless Populations
1. Human-centered computing
  1. Human computer interaction (HCI)

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Published In

CHI EA '17: Proceedings of the 2017 CHI Conference Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing Systems

May 2017

3954 pages

ISBN:9781450346566

DOI:10.1145/3027063

General Chairs:
Gloria Mark
University of California Irvine
,
Susan Fussell
Cornell University
,
Program Chairs:
Cliff Lampe
University of Michigan
,
m.c. schraefel
University of Southampton
,
Juan Pablo Hourcade
University of Iowa
,
Caroline Appert
Université Paris-Sud
,
Daniel Wigdor
University of Toronto

Permission to make digital or hard copies of part or all of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for third-party components of this work must be honored. For all other uses, contact the Owner/Author.

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Published: 06 May 2017

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CHI '17: CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems

May 6 - 11, 2017

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CHI EA '17 Paper Acceptance Rate 1,000 of 5,000 submissions, 20%;

Overall Acceptance Rate 6,164 of 23,696 submissions, 26%

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Anuyah OConrado ACarlson CGilbride HMetoyer R(2023)Exploring the Barriers and Potential Opportunities of Technology Integration in Community-Based Social Service OrganizationsACM Journal on Computing and Sustainable Societies10.1145/36107201:1(1-28)Online publication date: 22-Sep-2023
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3610720

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Recommendations

Freedge: Fighting Food Insecurity With Connected Infrastructure

Food-availability SMS system for U.S. homeless communities

COOKNOOK: Intelligent Meal Planning Application

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