During this step, I chose to compare both an indirect and direct competitor to show the common features found in apps aimed at helping homeless people. Kanndoo Cara are a direct competitor as they offer the same services as Halfway Home. The app aims to provide work opportunities, accommodation and charitable donations to people in need.

The StreetLink app also aim to assist homeless people by using a different approach. I chose them as an indirect competitor for my analysis as their app is based solely on the communication between the community and the local authorities.

The competitor analysis allowed me to identify commonalities between apps in the same industry. Both apps heavily rely on community support to achieve their goals. This is something that I aim to incorporate into the Halfway Home app also.

User Research

Statistics for the number of homeless people in the UK - Data collection challenges

Due to the nature of this case study, I used secondary data instead of primary data to deepen my understanding of the problems relating to homelessness. Research showed that there are currently no national figures available for the number of homeless people living in the UK. This is due to the difficulty around producing accurate statistics on rough sleepers and the difference in methods used across each nation. As such, the established rough sleeping official statistics for England and Wales are limited in detail, as they only attempt to record accurately those people seen or thought to be sleeping rough, over a very short time period.

“Over the past year the true scale of rough sleeping has been laid bare and to give the government credit they have responded by providing greater resources which has made a difference. Going forward we need to see both better data collection and the higher level of funding maintained if the government is going to meet its manifesto target to end rough sleeping.” - Paul Noblet, Head of Public Affairs at Centrepoint

Despite the difficulties regarding data collection, annual surveys are still being conducted to develop homelessness statistics in the UK. Local authorities have developed their own methods for collecting data on people sleeping rough. A method commonly used includes taking a single night snapshot on a 'typical night' to provide statistics for the local area. This method either uses a count-based estimate of visible rough sleeping, an evidence-based estimate meeting with local agencies or an evidence-based estimate meeting including a spotlight count.

Local authorities, together with local agencies, decide which approach and date to use for their snapshot of rough sleeping. They are advised to use the approach that will provide the most accurate estimate of the number of people sleeping rough in their local authority.

Figure 2: Estimated number of people sleeping rough on a single night in autumn in London and the Rest of England since 2010 (Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government)

The above image shows how the number of people experiencing homelessness has differed across the years. However, the figures from the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government are thought to be an underestimate as they are based on single-night snapshot accounts and estimates.

“We also need to be critical of using what is essentially a best guess of what rough sleeping looks like on a given night as a proxy for how many people are actually homeless in the UK. We know these figures massively under-represent the true scale of rough sleeping and homelessness. This year the situation has been especially volatile, and we do need to be wary of patting ourselves on the back too soon.” - Lucy Abraham, CEO of Glass Door Homeless Charity

How has COVID-19 affected homelessness in the UK?

Research shows that there was a decline in the number of rough sleepers during the COVID-19 pandemic. This is due to the introduction of the 'Everyone In' scheme, which was introduced by the government last year. The newly introduced scheme brought rough sleepers off the streets to provide them shelter in hotels and other emergency accommodation during the pandemic, this has led to a shift in the number of people moving off the street and into temporary accommodation.

Figure 2: Graph showing how the total number of rough sleepers have changed over recent years

Although there seemed to be less homeless people on the streets, there were still many elements of homelessness that were negatively affected by the pandemic. One of these elements was the councils ability to provide access to housing. Access to long-term housing was the capacity challenge most widely seen as having been posed by the pandemic by local authorities. A majority of councils bases in the UK stated that they had found it harder to place homeless households in both social rented and private rented sector housing during the pandemic. A pressing priority for many local authorities remains finding effective move on arrangements for people temporarily accommodated during the COVID-19 crisis.

Affinity Mapping

In order for me to learn as much as I could about the challenges faced by those experiencing homelessness, I examined the real life stories provided by Crisis UK, a national charity for homeless people. In addition to this, I also examined the reviews of the two apps previously used in my competitor analysis. These two sources allowed me to identify and collate the pain points voiced by homeless people.

I used the affinity mapping method to assist me in gathering and organising the data into relevant groups. These groups allowed me to visually make sense of the different areas that homeless people struggle with and brainstorm new ideas on how I could combat these issues.