This week, our team worked on the “identify” stage of the design process, which involved us defining and narrowing down what our specific design challenge is for this project. We started by brainstorming facts, assumptions, and background information that we had about the project from either our prior experience in the problem space, or from the information provided on our community partner’s website. After brainstorming, we noticed a handful of emerging themes: “theories about why current programming is not effective”, “user demographics”, “information about the current program”. We agreed that these were critical categories to think about because our project heavily depends on the existing information that our community partner is providing us, along with more general information and research on the issue of homelessness and economic empowerment at large. Additionally, we also noticed major questions that emerged during our discussion, that we think will need clarification from our community partner such as, “Is programming targeted for entire family units to attend, or are they strictly catered for adults?”. We look forward to meeting our community partner in the next few weeks and moving forward with the “Immerse” stage of the design process!