Jimmy Chen, a Significance Labs Fellow (Full disclosure: I am also a a fellow at Significance Labs which is creating tech products for the 75 million Americans who live in households earning less than $25,000 a year), is building a mobile website to help people apply for food stamps, or more officially the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). 21% of the population of New York City, a total of 1.76 million people, receive SNAP benefits. 40,000 people apply in the city every month. Chen wants to make that process easier.
It’s already possible to apply for food stamps online, but the application has not been optimized for mobile. “One of the things we did was spend a fair amount of time in person at the food stamp office, “ says Chen. “We noticed was that at least half the people waiting in line at the SNAP office were actually passing the time on their smartphones.”
So Chen’s team built a simple mobile website which asks the mandatory questions required to submit the first stage of the food stamp application process - enrollment. “We think it’s important to reach people where they are. Increasingly, they’re on smartphones,” says Chen. He then bought $200 of mobile Facebook ads and did a few days of testing. 55 people enrolled for SNAP via the mobile website.
If you apply in person, Chen estimates that depending on the time you go to the SNAP office (a later start means a longer wait), it takes half an hour to an hour to submit the initial enrollment form. “We think we can simplify enrollment down to about five to ten minutes, probably five minutes actually.” If you have to take time off work, or find someone to watch your kids while you travel back and forth to the SNAP office, that’s a significant saving.
Nevertheless reactions to the application has been mixed. “The biggest reaction is ‘Oh it sounds like a cool idea but would poor people really apply for food stamps on their phones?’” Chen says. “Our early data suggests that we are on the right track.” More often, people express disbelief at the idea that low income Americans have smartphones at all.
Lesson 1: Mobile First
Erika Boll is a researcher at Significance Labs. She is is conducting a new survey on smartphone usage among low-income New Yorkers in neighborhoods like South Bronx, Harlem, Washington Heights and parts of Brooklyn. So far Boll has polled around 400 people. She is hoping to top 3000 by mid-August.
What proportion of respondents have a smartphone? “A vast majority,” she says. “So last night in a room of seven, six had smartphones. They were all folks from one of Brooklyn's poorest neighborhoods. I've run it a number of times outside the welfare office. I think people might be surprised by how many have smartphones.”
Not only do low-income Americans have smartphones, but they are much more likely to rely on their mobile device as their main or only method of going online. A 2013 Pew research survey showed that 45% of users living in households with an annual income of less than $30,000 mostly use their phone to go online, compared with 27% of those living in households with an annual income of $75,000 or more. What’s more, six in ten Hispanics and 43% of African-Americans in the lowest income bracket are cell-mostly internet users, compared with 27% of whites.
“In 2014 a smartphone is the necessity," says Chen. "A laptop or desktop computer, which used to be the necessity, is now the luxury and so it’s only afforded by people who have the means to do so.”
Lesson 2: Build for Android or Mobile Web
If the tech industry wants to reach low-income Americans, it needs to get over its obsession with the iPhone. “One thing we found is that a very large number of people use Android devices, compared to iPhones, “ says Shazad Mohamed, another Significance Labs Fellow. Mohamed’s team is working on tools to make it easier for low-income Americans aged over 60 to take advantage of the services available on their phone.
“I think the key lesson is to definitely be focusing on targeting Android as a platform,” says Mohamed. “Or mobile web. And to recognize that there actually may be a pretty wide spectrum of operating system versions that they're using. Right now it's generally considered good practice to start building for iOS first, because of the platform is simpler -- there's less complexity and fragmentation -- but in doing so, you may actually end up missing out on this entire demographic.”
Not only do people in this population use Android, they are not keen on apps. “Nobody buys apps, lots of people buy music,“ says Boll. Mohamed echoes this insight. “A large number of people haven't downloaded apps,” he says. “And that could be for a number of reasons. It could be because of technical literacy. It could be because they don't have the relevant data plans that they would be able to take advantage of them on a day-to-day basis.”
A more surprising result from Mohamed’s research is that a lot of older, low-income users use alternative input methods on their smartphones. “Things like voice recognition,” he says. “I think, for older audiences, it's hard to use traditional touch input with the same fidelity. Or it may be difficult because of screen size.”
Lesson 3: Use Facebook and Text Messaging
Boll has been asking her survey respondents when and how they go online. “Everyone has a smartphone but they use it for wi-fi. So it's not a question of do they have access to the Internet, it's when do they have access to the Internet? So they use it much more sparingly or in different ways depending on when they actually can have access to free Wi-Fi.”
The communication tools low-income Americans use most are also different to the population at large. “Text and Facebook dominate, email much less so,” she says. “If you're on wi-fi and you're not paying for access, it makes sense to use Facebook rather than pay to call or text. And we're asking a broad population, not just young people. It's proving to be true across all ages.”
This population of users also has some serious trust issues. “Most people have multiple (social) profiles where they're sharing all kinds of information around exactly where they are on a day to day basis, “ says Boll. “It's not uncommon for people to put in their credit card information to buy a product -- new shoes or
