# Geofreebie: A Location-Based Freecycling App to Support Forced Migrant
Resettlement

Lucas Braun and Auriol Degbelo and Christian Kray  Institute for
Geoinformatics, University of Münster
lucasalan@gmail.com$|$auriol.degbelo<EMAIL_ADDRESS>
###### Abstract

Germany has witnessed an influx of forced migrants in recent years. Promoting
social interaction with the local community is key to supporting the
resettlement of these newcomers. Location-based freecycling services present
important benefits due to freecycling’s potential to bolster social engagement
and location-based services’ ability to adapt to the user’s context. Yet,
their potential to support forced migrants’ resettlement is yet to be
examined. We conducted needs assessment interviews with 11 participants in
Münster, Germany. We analyzed the interview results to develop user
requirements for location-based freecycling services. We then implemented a
subset of the user requirements as a prototype mobile app called Geofreebie.
The evaluation of the app with 22 participants showed that Geofreebie offered
two key advantages for forced migrants’ resettlement: it increased the size of
their social network, and created a sense of community on their side. These
findings can benefit researchers and developers of location-based services to
support forced migrant resettlement.

Keywords: forced migrant resettlement, freecycling, location-based services,
user-centered design, social integration

##  1 Introduction

Germany has witnessed an influx of forced migrants in recent years - 1.7
million asylum seekers between 2015 and 2019 according to the (BAMF, 2020).
Facilitating the social integration of these migrants in their new society is
vital to social cohesion. Promoting social interaction of the forced migrants
with the local community during their resettlement is key in this context. As
a guide from the Council of Europe puts it: “enabling diverse positive
interactions builds belonging and cohesion” (Orton, 2012). ‘Interaction’ here
refers to everyday processes by which migrants engage with each other and with
receiving communities; ‘positive interaction’ denotes processes that help
build networks of mutually supportive relationships in a way that contributes
to a more cohesive society (Orton, 2012).

Several studies have investigated how forced migrant resettlement can be eased
by the use of novel technologies (Almohamed and Vyas, 2016b; Schreieck et al.,
2017; Ngan et al., 2016; Brown and Grinter, 2016). Alam and Imran (2015) found
that digital inclusion and social inclusion are linked issues for refugees. A
study in New Zealand found that in order to promote the social inclusion of
refugees, researchers and policymakers must consider information and
communication technologies (ICT) (Díaz Andrade and Doolin, 2016). Mobile
phones thus have a key role to play in the promotion of the social inclusion
of forced migrants.

Previous work to promote social inclusion for sustainable integration of
forced migrants has relied on intercultural computer clubs and intercultural
activities at school. The come_IN approach (Schubert et al., 2011; Yerousis et
al., 2015; Weibert and Wulf, 2010) brings together people of different
backgrounds and ages to work on joint projects, realize individual ideas at
the computer, study or play. For instance, come_IN projects connected German
locals with participants with a Turkish migration background in (Weibert and
Wulf, 2010). They also connected local Palestinian volunteers with an academic
background, and children from refugee camps in (Yerousis et al., 2015).
Bustamante Duarte et al. (2018a) brought together young forced migrants and
local students to ideate on urban services for other newcomers during a case
study in Münster, Germany. Complementary to these initiatives, we propose a
freecycling-based approach in this work. We argue that freecycling platforms
are one kind of location-based service with a unique potential to foster
social integration of forced migrants. Freecycling is the act of getting rid
of something you do not need any more by giving it to someone else who does
need it, without asking for a payment of any kind in return.

Several features of freecycling make it particularly relevant to the promotion
of ‘positive interaction’ (as defined above) during their resettlement. First
of all, freecycling platforms depend on knowing the users’ locations in order
to provide them with listings that can be picked up without excessive cost to
the collector. Such co-located exchanges of material goods, both among forced
migrants and between forced migrants and locals who are not forced migrants,
could help to partially address social isolation. Indeed, location-based
social networks facilitate arranging to meet in person and the exploration of
one’s environment (Traynor and Curran, 2013). Location-based context filtering
makes services easier to use by reducing information overload and tailoring
what is offered to the individual user. Tailoring to a local context may be
particularly powerful when the goal is to create social contact, because the
probability of social connection between two individuals decreases with the
physical distance between them (Scellato et al., 2011). In addition to its
environmental benefits and appeal to people with limited resources,
freecycling leads to trust-filled interactions outside of kin groups (Nelson
and Rademacher, 2009), encourages civic engagement (Nelson et al., 2007), and
blurs binary boundaries of needs and consumption (Eden, 2017).

These benefits have significant potential to support the resettlement of
forced migrants but have yet to be researched as such. This article aims to
investigate the potential of a freecycling-based approach for the promotion of
social integration during forced migrant resettlement. Recirculation of goods
is at the core of freecycling. As a result, freecycling is a sharing economy
activity in line with the categories of sharing economy undertakings
introduced in (Schor, 2014). Germany is thus a good place for the current
study because a survey (TNS Emnid, 2015) has reported the willingness of
consumers to share things they own with others. 88% of the respondents
reported their readiness to share things with others. Of these, 79% were
willing to share only with people they know and 9% reported being willing to
share with both acquaintances and people they do not know. These figures
suggest that at least some individuals of the population would be willing to
participate in freecycling with people they do not know.

We used human-centered design principles to structure our exploration. Human-
centered design focuses on improving ease of use and usefulness of services
based on user input, and has been successfully applied to geospatial services
(e.g., Çay et al., 2019; Roth et al., 2015; Perebner et al., 2019). We applied
the human-centered design process in three phases. In the first phase we
performed a needs assessment study, carrying out interviews and extracting
context and user requirements from the data. In the second phase we developed
a prototype location-based freecycling service based on the needs identified.
In phase three we carried out a user study to evaluate the prototype design.

The contributions of the article are threefold: (i) insights from a need
assessment study, which identified and triangulated the needs of forced
migrants, non-migrant locals, and moderators regarding a freecycling service;
(ii) an open-source location-based freecycling service that addresses those
needs; and (iii) lessons learned from a 2-week trial evaluating the service.

##  2 Related Work

The design of a location-based freecycling service that supports the
resettlement of forced migrants requires i) an evaluation of the opportunities
offered by geospatial technologies in this area, ii) a consideration of the
best practices and common concerns when developing ICT to address forced
migrant challenges, and (ii) an understanding of the strengths and limitations
of freecycling platforms for promoting positive social contact. Following is a
short summary of past research on each of these three topics.

###  2.1 Geospatial Technologies for Forced Migrants

Location-based services have numerous application areas, with the more mature
including tourism, transportation, healthcare, assistance, social networking,
and gaming (see Huang et al., 2018; Raper et al., 2007). In the context of
(forced) migration, relocation (i.e., moving from one country to another) is
an obvious task supported by LBS, and understanding its spatial patterns falls
within the purview of LBS research. A preliminary attempt to characterize
transnational migration using location data from network operators was
presented in (Ahas et al., 2018). Besides, relocation, resettlement is another
area where LBS can be useful. For instance, they can help newcomers explore
and acquire a mental map of the cities where they resettle. Or as mentioned
above, they may be useful for social networking (a location-based freecycling
platform is a purpose-driven location-based social network in the sense of
Roick and Heuser, 2013).

An example of location-based service to support spatial knowledge acquisition
during resettlement was provided in (Kochar, 2017). The author compared
pedestrian navigation using a traditional map view to a map + augmented
reality (AR) view, and reported that the map + AR view improved the recall of
street names. Closely related, but focused more on navigational aspects during
resettlement is the Lantern system (Baranoff et al., 2015). Lantern is a
service that allows forced migrants in the United States to learn about their
new environment by scanning strategically-placed NFC (Near Field
Communication) stickers with their phones. Interacting with the Lantern
service requires the migrants to wave their phones over NFC tags. They then
get context-based guidance depending on their location. Our work has a similar
objective to these two - facilitate resettlement - but a distinct focus on
fostering social interaction through a freecycling approach.

###  2.2 Freecycling

In 2003, Deron Beal coined the term “freecycle,” a blend between the words
“free” and “recycle,” when he founded The Freecycle Network in Tucson,
Arizona, in the United States111https://www.freecycle.org/about/background
(accessed: June 07, 2020).. Making things available for free via the internet,
however, has been popular for much longer (think software, music, etc.) (Eden,
2017). There are now innumerable freecycling platforms all over the world. The
Freecycle Network alone claims to have millions of members in more than 110
countries.

In Münster, the most notable freecycling platforms take the form of Facebook
groups. The biggest is “Verschenk’s Münster,” a giving-only platform with
roughly 28,000 members as of this
writing222https://www.facebook.com/groups/473505729373257 (accessed: June 07,
2020).. The second largest is “Foodsharing Münster,” a group focused
specifically on avoiding food waste, which currently had just over 8,000
members at the time of this
writing333https://www.facebook.com/groups/607791439294335 (accessed: June 07,
2020).. eBay Kleinanzeigen, a German subsidiary of the international eBay
corporation, is a third popular platform for the free peer-to-peer exchange of
goods444https://themen.ebay-kleinanzeigen.de/ueber-uns/ (accessed: June 07,
2020)..

####  2.2.1 Value

It has been shown that freecycling leads to trust-filled interactions between
individuals with little in common other than their participation in a
freecycling group (Nelson and Rademacher, 2009). Freecycling also encourages
civil engagement and members tend to be more politically engaged in society
than the average citizen (Nelson et al., 2007). Freecycling has also been
shown to blur binary boundaries that are normally quite stark in such systems
of exchange. Freecycling platforms bring together consumers and producers,
givers and receivers, those who have resources and those who do not. Members
can embody both roles at the same time. The platforms connect digital and
material worlds, demonstrating the potential of virtual communities to have a
real-world impact on people’s lives. Finally, they unite mainstream and
alternative cultures in one community (Eden, 2017). Therefore, participation
in such communities could be of great value to the social integration of
forced migrants.

####  2.2.2 Challenges

Organizational policies within current freecycling systems tend to tightly
control the nature of exchanges due to an overemphasized focus on the
environment. These policies contribute to the dominance of user communities by
those seeking only “green-washed convenience.” Such user communities exhibit
less altruism and solidarity when compared with other online groups (Aptekar,
2016). Freecycling communities are also not the altruistic “gift economies”
that platform administrators often claim them to be, since most members expect
some kind of generalized reciprocity, i.e. a reciprocal reward that may only
come after a delay or from a different person than the recipient of the
original “gift”. Transactions that take place through such systems are a
“hybridized form of exchange”, having characteristics of both gift giving and
trading (Arsel and Dobscha, 2011). In order to create a real sense of
solidarity (not charity) in generalized exchange platforms, the forging of a
group identity is key (Willer et al., 2012). Some groups forge such an
identity through a common interest in sustainability, but that identity
excludes people who could benefit from the service in practical ways, such as
by acquiring things for free that they otherwise cannot afford (Aptekar,
2016).

Our idea of a freecycling-based approach to support social integration of
forced migrants in their new communities does not impose such restrictions
regarding topical emphasis (i.e., environment) and/or group identity (i.e.
sustainability). Instead our key premise is that enabling interactions between
the forced migrants and residents in the local community can provide
opportunities, for both, to build relationships. These relationships, in turn,
are needed to undermine the development of parallel societies.

###  2.3 ICT for Forced Migrants

ICT has been shown to help newcomers build social capital in their new city,
to build trust by facilitating connections between newcomers and members of
the host community, as well as by creating a sense of belonging in a group
(Almohamed and Vyas, 2016b).

####  2.3.1 Challenges

The design of ICT for newcomers involves the unique challenge of balancing
multiple cultural contexts in one system (Almohamed and Vyas, 2016a).
Designers must also consider users who have limited abilities in the local
language and perhaps with literacy in general, limited internet access, a need
to understand particularly complex compliance and geospatial information, a
high need for reliability and timeliness, and limited experience with
geospatial technologies (Bustamante Duarte et al., 2018b).

####  2.3.2 Best Practices

The following services were all developed to study different ways that ICT can
ease the resettlement of forced migrants. In each case, the researchers
identified some useful best practices when designing tech for newcomers.

Rivrtran (Brown and Grinter, 2016) is a mobile app, also from the United
States, that helps forced migrants to communicate with people who don’t share
a common language by providing access to volunteer interpreters. The authors
found the strengths of such a service were that it facilitated communication
between refugees and people who could provide support, simultaneously
supporting and encouraging the users to eventually get by without such a
service, and made use of a voice-based user interface to accommodate users
with limited literacy. They also found a major benefit of the app was that it
supported forced migrants to build social capital simply by engaging in
everyday conversation.

Tarjimly is a similar service developed in the United States by Atif Javed,
Aziz Alghunaim, and Abubakar Abid (Utley, 2017). It is a Facebook Messenger
bot that connects refugees needing translation services with volunteers able
to help in the moment. The service shows what happens when you give people a
way to support forced migrants without being majorly inconvenienced: thousands
of volunteers offer interpretation services that would normally cost a
fortune. The creators chose to use Facebook Messenger as their platform
because it is a tool that is already familiar to so many users.

Integreat (Schreieck et al., 2017) is a service designed to facilitate
information dissemination to forced migrants in Germany. The authors outline a
number of best practices when designing software for maximum information
transmission in an intercultural context. While the focus of this paper is not
on information transmission, Integreat’s design principles are also useful
when applied to user interfaces intended for other purposes. For example,
icons should always be accompanied by text and services should be usable
offline.

Moin (Ngan et al., 2016) is a gamified informal learning app, also from
Germany. The authors highlight the value of using a human-centered design
process when developing technology for use by forced migrants, and stress the
importance of accommodating low language abilities. They also point out how
usability depends not only on the design of the system but also the context of
the user, and how the contextual differences of forced migrants and German
locals meant the app was much less usable for forced migrants.

Bustamante Duarte et al. (2018b) worked with forced migrants and social
workers in Münster, Germany, reviewing 36 apps and services and identifying
several best practices and gaps. They observed a lack of services focused on
non-Arabic-speakers and supporting offline use. They highlighted the
importance of supporting multi-directional exchanges, user collaboration,
flexible visualizations, and geovisualizations. They also recommended the use
of open-source data platforms to create systems where knowledge can be built
up over time by numerous contributors. Finally, they suggested the potential
value of better geospatial technologies and location-based features, which up
until now have been largely absent from ICT designed for forced migrants.

###  2.4 Summary

In this section, we have attempted to summarize past research on social
integration in the context of forced migration and the use of ICT to address
this and other forced migrant challenges. We highlighted areas that need more
research, including 1) the development of services that are explicitly
designed to promote the social integration of forced migrants and 2) the
adaptation of existing promising technologies – such as geospatial
technologies, location-based services, and freecycling systems – to the unique
needs of forced migrants. The method that guided our investigation is
explained in the next section.

##  3 Research method

The question explored in this work reads: “how to support forced migrants’
resettlement through a location-based freecycling service?” As said above, we
used human-centered design principles to structure our exploration. Abras et
al. (2004) indicated that there is a spectrum of ways in which users are
involved during human-centered (a.k.a. user-centered) design, but the crux is
that users are involved in some way. We applied the human-centered design
process in three phases, with each phase answering our research question in a
different way and producing a unique contribution. Phase one answered the
question theoretically and produced a list of needs and user requirements.
Phase two answered the question technologically and produced a prototype
location-based service demonstrating the feasibility of the designs. Phase
three answered the question in the field and resulted in validation of the
design decisions and a preliminary assessment of the usefulness of the
prototype.

Per the ISO definition (ISO, 2010), human-centered design consists of 5 steps,
4 of which may need repeating several times. They are: 1) plan the human-
centered design process, 2) understand and specify the context of use, 3)
specify user requirements, 4) produce design solutions to meet user
requirements, and 5) evaluate designs against requirements. Following is a
step-by-step overview of how we applied these steps in our work.

1\. Planning the human-centered design process. We outlined roughly when and
how each of the four remaining steps would be achieved, leaving room for
iteration. We identified three user groups to be at the center of the design
process. In this initial phase, we also met personally with local experts from
forced migrant and freecycling communities to glean their recommendations
about how to implement our design process. Young forced migrants expressed
interest in new technology and committed to help with the design process and
find others to participate too. Freecycling system moderators told us how to
get in touch with their users, shared common freecycling challenges and
provided assurance that the design of a new freecycling platform for forced
migrants would be supported by their communities.

2\. Understanding and specifying the context of use. In this study,
understanding the context of use meant investigating why and how forced
migrants currently make social contact in Münster. Additionally, it meant
learning about existing freecycling systems in the city. We used context
interviews to achieve both of these tasks. The details of this process are
described in Section 4.

3\. Specifying user requirements. In order to identify key user requirements
for a location-based freecycling service, we began by extracting implied needs
from the context interviews. These in turn were translated into user
requirements. See Section 4 for the results of this process.

4\. Producing design solutions to meet user requirements. The second phase of
the study was designing and implementing a prototype app. We decided to make a
cross-platform mobile app based on the location-based service called LBS-
Engine555https://github.com/LEinfeldt/LBS-Engine.. See Section 5 for a full
description of the implementation process and results.

5\. Evaluating the designs against the requirements. The designs were
evaluated in an iterative fashion, first by having individuals test the
prototype in one of the researcher’s presence, then by running a pilot
deployment to a small group of fellow students, and finally by deploying the
prototype app to a larger group for a two-week trial period. During the trial,
we collected data from users as we had planned. See Section 6 for full details
and a discussion of the results of the evaluation.

In line with the spirit of the design study methodology (Sedlmair et al.,
2012), a reflection on the transferability of this work’s results to other
domains is presented in Section 7.4. Sedlmair et al. (2012) pointed out that
design studies have three types of research contributions: characterization of
a problem domain (e.g., through abstraction into tasks and data); a validated
design; and reflection. This article offers the three types of contributions.
The needs assessment study (Section 4) provides a characterization of the
problem domain: how to connect (forced migrants); how to freecycle (local
freecyclers); and how to moderate a freecycling platform (moderators). The
prototype and its validation through user feedback is the subject of Sections
5 and 6. The reflection takes place in Section 7.

##  4 Needs assessment study

User modelling is an important part of LBS research (as discussed e.g., in
Jiang and Yao, 2006). Huang and Gartner (2018) put user modelling into the
three ‘core’ of LBS (next to positioning and the communication of location
information). Thus, one objective of this first study was to assess the needs
of forced migrants with regards to social interaction during resettlement. A
second objective of this study was to assess the needs of the users and
moderators of existing freecycling platforms in Münster. An understanding of
those needs is essential to the design of a useful and usable location-based
freecycling service.

In preliminary discussions with experts on forced migrant resettlement and
freecycling in Münster, we decided to focus on triangulating the needs of
three user groups to develop a user-centered application. We used in-person
interviews to understand and specify the context of use for each group. The
first group was forced migrants living in the general vicinity of Münster. The
second group was residents of Münster who participate in some capacity in one
of the several freecycling communities in Münster. The third group was the
moderators of said groups. Collecting input from these three groups at the
same time is valuable because they provide three complementary perspectives to
the topic of resettlement support using freecycling systems. Forced migrants
know how to make social contacts as a newcomer. Freecyclers know how to
freecycle. And freecycling moderators know how to make a freecycling service
safe and easy to use.

###  4.1 Participants

We recruited forced migrant participants by approaching acquaintances that we
met through mutual friends and by attending newcomer-friendly meet-ups (e.g.,
WelcomeC@fé Münster). We contacted the moderators of freecycling services
through their publicly available online contact information and obtained their
permission to recruit freecyclers by posting directly in the freecycling
forums. Further participants joined the study through snowball sampling. For
each user group, we continued interviewing until participants’ responses were
no longer yielding significant new information about the focus topic.

Five of the interviewees were forced migrants, three were members of existing
freecycling platforms in Münster, and three were moderators of these
platforms. Of the five forced migrant participants, two were between the ages
of 18 and 25, and three between 26 and 35. Two migrated from Syria and the
other three from Iran, Iraq, and Turkey. We interviewed four men and one
woman. Regarding the freecycling platform members, 1 was between the ages of
18 and 25, and two between 26 and 35. Two were women and one was a man. Only
one did not grow up in Germany but rather immigrated to Münster from Eastern
Europe for university. The freecycling moderators represented the broadest age
range, between 29 and 50 years old. They all came from Germany and were long-
term residents of Münster. Again, two were women and one was a man.

###  4.2 Procedure

We performed a total of eleven context interviews over a period of 22 days in
November 2018. The script we followed for each interview can be found in
appendix A1. The interviews followed the semi-structured focused interview
method. This allowed us to maintain non-directive management of the
conversation and still gather very specific information about the topic in
question (Flick et al., 2004). The objective of the interviews was to
understand the context in which the user community performs the focus
activity.

The forced migrant interviews focused on making social contact as a newcomer
in Münster. The freecycler interviews focused on freecycling and the moderator
interviews focused on moderating freecycling. In the end, all user groups gave
information about all three topics. Forced migrants and freecyclers talked
about the important role of the moderators in their communities. Freecyclers
and moderators talked about making friends through their freecycling systems.
Moderators talked about their own freecycling practices and forced migrants
described the importance of giving generously when making social contacts in a
new place. This helped us identify the context of use of a service that both
enables freecycling and promotes social interaction.

Context of use is made up of three elements: user goals, user tasks, and user
environment (Maguire, 2001). The interviews in this study were made up of five
questions, each with its own purpose and each helping to gather information
about some of the three context elements. The main guiding questions were
supplemented with probing questions in case the user needed more prompting to
cover the topic. The full sheet of guiding questions for each user group can
be found in appendix A. All appendices are available as supplementary
material, see Section Supplementary material.

###  4.3 Analysis

Learning about the context of use allowed us to identify the core tasks that
would need to be performed in the system we were designing. The core tasks, in
turn, served as a foundation for all of the subsequent elements of the design
process:

context $\rightarrow$ core tasks $\rightarrow$ implied needs $\rightarrow$
usage requirements $\rightarrow$ design

In order to process the interviews, we partially transcribed the recordings
into what are known as context scenarios. Context scenarios are summaries of
the interview responses, formulated in an easy-to-understand and vivid way.
Each interview yields one context scenario, so there is overlap between the
scenarios. Repeat information is consolidated in the next step. Context
scenarios serve as the building blocks from which we derive both implied needs
and usage requirements. As shown in Table 1, context scenarios are made up of
narrative statements with identifying user information (such as names)
removed. An example context scenario can be found in appendix B.

The next step is to break down the interviewee’s narrative descriptions of
their activities into their core tasks and other context elements. This coding
method is similar to descriptive coding or process coding (Saldaña, 2009), but
focuses specifically on “tasks” or actions taken by the
interviewee666Descriptive coding summarizes in a word or short phrase – most
often as a noun – the basic topic of a passage of qualitative data; process
coding uses gerunds (“-ing” words) exclusively to connote action in the data
(see Saldaña, 2009).. The core tasks are phrased as a short verb phrase in the
present tense, such as “plan spontaneous meet-ups,” “introduce yourself,” or
“find out about open/safe social opportunities”. These were repeated quite
often across interviews, allowing the final core task list to be consolidated
quite a bit by removing duplicates.

Context analysis element |  Structure
---|---
Context scenario |  User <verb in present tense>…
Core tasks |  <Verb phrase in present tense>
Implied needs |  In order to … , … must … .
Usage requirements |  The user must be able to … the system …
Table 1: Context analysis elements and their structure

The core tasks translated naturally into implied needs. Implied needs were
determined by analyzing each core task and identifying the conditions that
must be met in order for the task to be completable. These conditions were
pulled directly from the context scenarios, so they can be linked back to the
words of the interviewee. From implied needs to usage requirements is a small
leap. The translation is mostly a grammatical shift to phrase the implied need
in terms of a user and an unspecified system.

###  4.4 Results

We extracted a total of 114 context elements from the five interviews with
forced migrants, 95 context elements from the three interviews with
freecycling participants, and 114 context elements from the interviews with
the freecycling moderators. Table 2 presents the 20 most frequent tasks
mentioned in the interviews by each of the user group, along with their
respective frequencies. Since our primary interest in this work is the social
integration of forced migrants, their needs are now discussed in detail.

#### Core tasks and implied needs

We identified six core tasks when making social contacts as a newcomer, and
analyzed the interviews to determine what forced migrants need in order to
complete those tasks. Below are the six core tasks, along with the most
frequent implied needs (and the number of participants who pointed at them).

  * •

Core task 1: find time to be social

    * –

Need: match their schedule with social opportunities (N=3)

    * –

Need: maintain financial stability (N=2)

  * •

Core task 2: find potential contacts

    * –

Need: meet an “introducer” (N=5)

    * –

Need: be patient and open to chance (N=4)

  * •

Core task 3: find a reason to initiate contact with potential contact

    * –

Need: find people with common interests (N=5)

    * –

Need: share their talents and abilities (N=4)

  * •

Core task 4: communicate with potential contacts

    * –

Need: have accommodation of low language abilities (N=5)

    * –

Need: improve communication ability (N=3)

    * –

Need: start conversation (N=3)

  * •

Core task 5: plan and execute meetups with potential contacts

    * –

Need: invite others to their home (N=5)

    * –

Need: plan spontaneous meetups (N=5)

  * •

Core task 6: avoid bad interactions with potential contacts

    * –

Need: block people who are bothering them (N=2)

Only the most frequent implied needs are mentioned here. The full list of
implied needs can be found in appendix D.

| Forced migrants | Local freecyclers | Moderators
---|---|---|---
|  Tasks | % |  Tasks | % |  Tasks | %
1 |  find people with common interests | 100 |  choose whom to give offer | 100 |  approve people to join the group | 100
2 |  invite others to your home | 100 |  take a photo | 100 |  contact people who are not following the rules | 100
3 |  meet an “introducer” | 100 |  browse for interesting offers | 67 |  delete posts | 100
4 |  plan spontaneous meetups | 100 |  contact the people who react the fastest | 67 |  enforce the rules | 100
5 |  be patient and open to chance | 80 |  decide if it is worth meeting up | 67 |  resolve conflicts | 100
6 |  share your talents and abilities | 80 |  decide what item is not needed anymore | 67 |  tell members the rules | 100
7 |  find out about open/safe social opportunities | 60 |  decide who needs or will use the offer the most | 67 |  ask questions to people before they can join the group | 67
8 |  go regularly to work or school | 60 |  offer food | 67 |  block people who are bothering you | 67
9 |  improve communication ability | 60 |  post item | 67 |  block users who are misusing the system | 67
10 |  join a course or club | 60 |  say where to meet up | 67 |  check for new member requests | 67
11 |  join organization that puts you in contact with many people | 60 |  tell other users how you want to be contacted | 67 |  check quality of offers | 67
12 |  learn about host culture | 60 |  announce who can have the offer publically | 33 |  communicate with other moderators | 67
13 |  match schedule with social opportunities | 60 |  be patient and open to chance | 33 |  delete all posts for one member | 67
14 |  solicit help | 60 |  check group regularly for something you need | 33 |  delete outdated posts | 67
15 |  start conversation | 60 |  clarify details of meet-up | 33 |  develop empathy for conflict parties | 67
16 |  add other as a friend on Facebook | 40 |  complete the offer hand-over quickly | 33 |  field misuse reports and feedback | 67
17 |  ask others questions | 40 |  connect people with things to give away with people who can use them | 33 |  identify old offers | 67
18 |  ask people about social opportunities | 40 |  describe the offer | 33 |  look at every person who wants to join | 67
19 |  block people who are bothering you | 40 |  evaluate potential contacts | 33 |  scan offers to find misuse | 67
20 |  connect with people from different generations | 40 |  explain need | 33 |  take a step backward from conflicts | 67
Table 2: Example tasks most frequently mentioned in the interviews, along with
their frequency (in %). The topical emphasis of the interviews was tailored to
the group of participants: how they connect (forced migrants); how to
freecycle (local freecyclers); how to moderate a freecycling platform
(moderators). The full list of tasks extracted from the data is available in
the supplementary material.

#### User Requirements

Out of the context and needs we derived a list of user requirements for a
location-based service to foster the social interaction of forced migrants.
For example, the user must be able to:

  * •

see promotions of social opportunities in the system (core task 1)

  * •

see who is an “introducer” in the system (core task 2)

  * •

tell the system about food they have to offer (core task 3)

  * •

see the interests of other users in the system (core task 3)

  * •

tell the system about their talents and abilities (core task 3)

  * •

choose the language of the system (core task 4)

  * •

tell the system to say something to another user (core task 4)

  * •

see the location of the homes of other users in the system (core task 5).

  * •

tell the system to invite other users to their home (core task 5)

  * •

tell the system to confirm or reject a suggested place to meet up (core task
5)

  * •

tell the system that they are available to meet up spontaneously (core task 5)

  * •

see information about other users in the system before contacting them (core
task 6)

  * •

tell the system to block another user (core task 6)

These too are exemplar requirements. The full list of user requirements can be
found in appendix E.

#### Shared context of use

As mentioned above, a context of use is made of three elements: user goals,
user tasks and user environment. Maguire (2001) further broke down
‘environment’ into: physical environment where the product is used, technical
environment (hardware and software), and social/organizational environment
(e.g., attitudes and cultures). From the analysis, we noticed that all three
user groups reported the following shared context elements:

  * •

Goal: increasing personal happiness

  * •

Task: invite others into your home

  * •

Tool: smartphones (technical environment)

  * •

Risk: uncertainty about strangers (social environment/attitude)

  * •

Philosophy: patience and openness (social environment/attitude)

This shared context has important implications for location-based freecycling
services aimed at fostering the social integration of forced migrants. In
particular, the presence of a shared goal suggests the pertinence of
investigating systems bringing together the three user groups more broadly
beyond the LBS freecycling service that is the focus of this work. The
presence of a shared risk, philosophy and task is evidence that shared
practices can emerge from the interaction between the three groups. Finally,
the presence of a smartphone as tool in the shared context suggests that the
shared goal is best supported through an app (in lieu of a desktop application
or a website for example).

##  5 Prototype development

We came up with a number of design solutions to meet the above needs with
features of a location-based freecycling service called
“Geofreebie”777https://github.com/lbraun/geofreebie.. We did this by
implementing a subset of the user requirements developed during the needs
assessment phase.

###  5.1 Needs addressed

Overall, we identified 55 forced migrant needs in regards to increasing social
contact. Here we discuss five key needs which we tried to address with the
prototype that we developed.

Contact with a local “introducer”: Similar to the findings of Schreieck et al.
(2017) that a “local contact person” is the most important source of
information for newcomers, we found that meeting an “introducer” is their most
important source of social connection. All of the forced migrants with whom we
talked explained the importance of meeting a local with a strong social
network who is able to introduce newcomers to potential new contacts. Most
described just one key person who had introduced them to many friends.

Home where contact can be developed: Forced migrants commonly invite people
into their homes as a strategy to make meaningful social contacts. All of our
participants mentioned using this strategy at least once. To do this, however,
forced migrants must have a home that can accommodate guests. They must be
able to communicate their home’s location to others and feel confident and
safe doing so.

Accommodation of low language abilities: Perhaps the most discussed topic in
our interviews about making social contact in Münster was the challenge of
connecting with people without knowing much German. All of our participants
experienced and overcame this challenge. They highlighted the need both for
translators and translated resources when forced migrants first arrive, but
also for opportunities to learn the local language.

Basis to initiate contact: A commonly known strategy for making social
contacts, not just among forced migrants but also in many other circles of
society, is to seek out people with common interests. All of our participants
reported doing this. They explained commonalities provide a basis to initiate
a first conversation and an excuse to meet up again.

Element of spontaneity and scheduling flexibility: Newcomers have busy,
shifting, and complex schedules due to the wide variety and irregularity of
important tasks they must complete in order to settle into their new home
(Bustamante Duarte et al., 2018b, p. 17). We heard repeatedly that in order to
make social contacts, one must find opportunities that fit with one’s
schedule. Often this means being spontaneous and approaching strangers to join
a football match, start a conversation in a public place, or to offer help.

###  5.2 Technologies

We chose to implement the service as a mobile app because forced migrants are
more likely to use smartphones than other hardware (Xu and Maitland, 2016).
All of our interviewees had smartphones and cited them as their main means of
communicating and one of their main tools when making new social contacts.
Because most people carry their phones with them throughout the day, mobile
apps also open up possibilities for spontaneous social contact in the moment
and the location where the context is most apt. We used the open source LBS-
Engine888https://github.com/LEinfeldt/LBS-Engine., an application template for
the development of location-based services, as a foundation for our app. This
sped up development by providing an initial framework for displaying a map,
navigating via a tab bar and a sidebar, and presenting the user with various
settings. The LBS-Engine uses the open source Cordova framework from Apache,
which allows mobile apps to be developed using web app technologies like
JavaScript, HTML, and CSS. A major benefit of using Cordova is that once the
application is developed, it can be easily ported to several different
operating systems without rewriting the code. Currently supported operating
systems include Android, iOS, OS X and Windows. This makes services developed
with Cordova more accessible because they do not depend on the user having one
specific operating system. The LBS-Engine makes use of the open source
JavaScript mapping package LeafletJS and freely available basemap data from
OpenStreetMap. It also uses the React JavaScript library with mobile-friendly
user interface elements provided by Onsen UI. We maintained these technology
choices.

###  5.3 Features

Following is a list of some of the more interesting features we implemented.
For each feature we describe why we found the feature was important for a
location-based freecycling service and why we implemented it the way we did.

####  5.3.1 Authentication

We decided to use passwordless authentication to make it easy to sign up and
sign in. During the needs assessment we heard that many in our user groups had
no desire to create another account and remember yet another password. We
chose to allow people to sign in with Facebook and Google because 1) Facebook
is the primary platform for freecycling in Münster, meaning most freecyclers
are already connected and familiar with it, and 2) among our participants,
Facebook and Google/Gmail/YouTube were the two most commonly referenced
digital services after WhatsApp, which doesn’t provide its own authentication
service. We decided to additionally give users the option to sign up with
their email and a secure password. While having to enter these details is
usually less convenient, several participants from our needs assessment study
expressed a preference for services that did not require connection with large
corporate social networks like Facebook. Providing this third option allowed
users to make the choice themselves between convenience and anonymity.

####  5.3.2 User approval

Approving new users was identified as the primary task of freecycling
moderators. Local freecyclers repeatedly mentioned feeling reassured about the
trustworthiness of other users because of the approval process. We also
learned that forced migrants have their own system for approving new social
contacts, often employing the very same strategies as freecycling moderators.
These strategies include asking simple questions to see if the other could
provide “normal” responses, identifying if the other is a part of a group that
the approver trusts, and keeping an eye out for conflicting political beliefs.
After signing up, new users are redirected to a screen informing them that
they will receive an email when their account is approved. Location-based
services enable an additional means of approval. In the Geofreebie prototype,
users are automatically approved to make an offer available based on their
physical presence in Münster. A bounding box geofence surrounds the city
limits and users outside of this fence are automatically shown as
“unavailable” in the system. This reduces misuse of the system by filtering
out users actually located in other cities, which is a common concern among
freecycling moderators.

####  5.3.3 User communication

We designed interactions such that the person making the offer gets to choose
the method of communication. This was reported to be common practice on
Münster’s Facebook-based freecycling platforms, where users would often state
if they preferred to be contacted via comment or private message. Users choose
how others can contact them on the settings page (see Figure 1, left). Toggle
switches control their response to the question “How do you want to be
contacted?” and when a certain contact mode is enabled, a text field appears
where the contact details for that mode can be entered.

Figure 1: Prototype settings pages

The four contact options we provided were email, Facebook, phone, and
WhatsApp. These were the four most popular communication methods of the
participants in our needs assessment study, matching the findings of Xu and
Maitland (2016). After a user provides contact details, links are
automatically generated from this information for other users to click on.
Figure 2 shows an example of how these links appeared in the map view.

####  5.3.4 Language and localization

We decided to make the app available in several languages in order to meet the
need for accessibility to those with low German abilities. We implemented a
language-switching feature called the locale menu, which is present in a
number of places around the app (see Figure 1, right). We implemented the
translation of the app’s strings in one file (localizations.json, see GitHub
code). This made it simple for more languages to be added: a volunteer
translator simply needed to go through and translate the list of 180 short
strings, which usually took less than one hour, and then the new strings could
be copied and pasted into a new element in the JSON array of localizations. By
the time the trial had begun, the app had been translated from English into
German, Arabic, Nepali, and Spanish. During the trial, another volunteer
stepped forward to help with Amharic, and a Farsi native speaker expressed
interest as well. The fact that the language menu is prominently present in
several places (e.g., the help pages, the consent form, the settings page) and
not just tucked away between other user preferences, is meant to accommodate
those with low ability in one language while still encouraging them to learn
other languages.

####  5.3.5 Map and list views

The map and list views of the prototype were intended to meet several needs at
once (see Figure 2). The location-based features showing the distance to other
users provides a basis to initiate contact (physical proximity) and facilitate
those with limited language abilities to better visualize the offer and its
location in the city. The Geofreebie star under the name of the person making
the offer highlights the number of offers the user has already successfully
delivered, thus indicating their status in the social network of the service
and suggesting their potential as an “introducer”. The app itself is also
intended to play the role of the introducer by presenting potential contacts
and suggesting reasons to connect.

Figure 2: Prototype map and list views

####  5.3.6 Reload button

Pilot testing also revealed the need for a refresh button. Mobile users often
do not trust their network connection and want to be sure that they have the
latest version of shared data. Such a button gives them control to see the
latest data when they want it, not at the standard interval when the app
refreshes data automatically. We added a refresh button to the top right
corner in the navigation bar, as can be seen in Figure 2.

####  5.3.7 In-app forms

We chose to implement the study consent form and study surveys as in-app forms
for a number of reasons. This allowed us to require users to fill out certain
forms before using the system, ensuring that consent was timely. This also
allowed us to recruit participants without meeting them in person, as no
physical paperwork was required to participate in the study.

####  5.3.8 Help

Offering help and technical support is important in any digital service. In
digital services for vulnerable populations, we found it becomes especially
important. These services must not only explain the functionality of the app
but also address concerns about safety and privacy, all in a way that is
easily understandable by users with a diversity of language abilities. Our
help page includes five sections: help, rules, contact, privacy, and consent.

##  6 Prototype evaluation

We conducted an evaluation study of the prototype app in February 2019 with 6
forced migrants and 16 local freecyclers. The objective of the trial was to
evaluate the usability and usefulness of Geofreebie. The independent variable
in the study was the user group of the participant (forced migrant or
experienced freecycler). The dependent variables were the overall usability,
the perceived usefulness and the effective usefulness of service. Usability
was measured using SUS (the System Usability Scale, Brooke (1995); Lewis
(2018), see appendix F4). Since we intended to evaluate the potential of the
freecycling-based approach to foster social integration, and social
interaction is a first step towards integration, perceived usefulness touched
on dimensions revolving around various aspects of social interaction. The
questionnaire handed over to participants was loosely based on the indicators
of social (dis)connectedness and perceived isolation defined by Cornwell and
Waite (2009). Nine dimensions were probed: increased contact, increased
contact with strangers, sense of solidarity created, sense of reliability
created, sense of trust created, sense of community created, possibility for
new friendships, increase in the size of the social network, and the reduced
feeling of social isolation. See appendix F5 for the full list of questions.
Finally, effective usefulness was assessed through the amount of goods
exchanged during the study.

###  6.1 Participants

We recruited forced migrant participants by contacting participants from our
first study and by reaching out to other forced migrants we had met during the
course of the project. We attended forced migrant meet-ups and helped
interested attendees install and sign up for the service in person. We
additionally shared a request for participants in a WhatsApp group for forced
migrants and other members of a local club for newcomers to Münster. We
recruited freecycling participants by posting in the two largest Münster
freecycling platforms and by contacting participants from the first study who
had expressed interest in later testing a prototype. All participants lived in
Münster and were 18 years old or older. We did not control for specific age or
experience. We motivated participation with a 10 Euro reward, delivered at the
end of the study.

Of the 29 people who downloaded the app and created an account during the
trial, we approved 25 for the study. From that pool, 22 consented to
participate, filled out all of the surveys, and saw the trial through to the
very end. Six of these self-identified as forced migrants. Of the six forced
migrant participants, all were between the ages of 18 and 25. Four came from
Syria, one from Turkey, and one form Eritrea. Four were men and two were
women.

###  6.2 Procedure

The trial began on a Thursday and ended on a Wednesday in order to give
participants two full weekends to try the app. Participants were required to
use their own Android smartphone and internet connection. They installed the
app via the Android Play Store. After installing the app and signing up for an
account, participants were instructed to wait for their account to be
approved. After their account was reviewed and approved, participants were
sent an email to welcome them to the user community. The welcome email also
contained links to instructions on how to get started with the app, the rules
of the service, and information about the study. Participants were encouraged
to reach out with any questions or concerns. Of the participants who showed
interest in the study, four user accounts were not approved: two because the
users signed up from outside of Germany, one due to insufficient information
about the person, and one that was an existing user trying to sign in with a
different email address. At the end of the trial, we contacted participants
individually to arrange payment of the study reward and collect post-trial
data. The app was removed from the Android Play Store and the back-end server
was shut down to prevent continued use of the service. We had participants
fill out the questionnaires to measure the app’s usability and usefulness.

#### Consent and Surveys

When participants logged into the app for the first time after approval, they
were taken to the in-app consent form. This form asked users to agree to
contribute their data to the study and separately requested permission to log
particularly sensitive location data. Forced migrant participants received
extra information about the consent to address ethical concerns when working
with participants from vulnerable populations. After providing consent,
participants filled out a demographic information questionnaire to give us a
sense of gender, age, country-of-origin, and user group representation. They
also completed the Lubben Social Network Scale (LSNS) six-item survey, a
validated self-report measure of social isolation that correlates with
negative health effects (Chang et al., 2018). We used this survey to obtain a
rough impression of the level of social engagement of our participants at the
start of the study. The average LSNS score for the forced migrant group was
17.2 (out of a maximum of 30) while the average LSNS score from the other
participants was 18.6/30, indicating moderate social engagement for both
groups. The questions from these two surveys are listed in appendix F1 and
appendix F2. Only after providing consent and completing the two surveys were
participants granted full access to the app for the duration of the study.

#### Data collection during the trial

Data was collected through both passive and active sampling. Passive sampling
was conducted during the study by logging user updates to the system in the
back-end server application. This was intended to help us understand how
participants used the app. Active sampling was conducted through surveys that
appeared to the user on the dashboard of the app as “pending reviews”. The
survey appeared immediately after completing an offer, the moment when
freecyclers usually meet in person, and asked for a brief review of the hand-
over. The intention of the active sampling was to collect data on any out-of-
app interactions that occurred because of use of the freecycling system. We
asked with whom, where, and how the contact was made. We also asked questions
about satisfaction and likelihood of meeting up again in an attempt to measure
the quality of the social contact. The exact questions of the survey can be
found in appendix F3.

###  6.3 Analysis

All data collected in this third phase of the study was quantitative and
required no qualitative analysis. We downloaded the data from the prototype
services’ database and used a Ruby script to process and summarize the
results. We tallied the datapoints by action, by user, and by action and user.
This allowed us to see how many people created offers, updated their profiles,
adjusted the app settings, etc. The responses to the end-of-study SUS
questionnaire were analyzed based on the classification of acceptable SUS
scores developed by Bangor et al. (2008). The responses to the questions about
usefulness were considered individually.

###  6.4 Results

#### Passive Sampling Results

Only 4 of the 23 participants posted offers in the app in total during the
two-week trial, which is roughly 1 post for every 6 users. When compared with
posting rates in other Münster freecycling platforms, this is abnormally
frequent posting. One of the most active freecycling services in Münster had
roughly 1 post for every 118 users in the same two-week period as the trial.
One of the less active services saw fewer than 1 post per 1000 users. Thus,
relative to the size of the community, the posting rate was very high, which
indicates the potential to create many opportunities for social contact. It is
also possible, however, that participants were motivated to post due to the
novelty of the service and the desire to support the study. A longer trial
would be required to see if the trend continued.

#### Usability Survey Results

The average SUS score across all users was 82.6. Among forced migrant
participants, the average score was 82.1 and among freecyclers it was 82.9.

#### Effective Usefulness Results

Just one participant, a forced migrant, reported completing an offer. This
interaction was reported to be arranged over WhatsApp with a user who was not
a forced migrant and took place at the participant’s home. The participant
reported being satisfied with the interaction and believed they were likely to
contact the person again.

#### Perceived Usefulness Survey Results

In the final questionnaire, just one participant said the service led to
increased contact with others during the two-week trial: the same participant
who completed an offer. A majority of the participants in both user groups
disagreed or strongly disagreed with the statements “I think using this system
increased my contact with others during the last two weeks”, “I made contact
with people outside of my normal circles through this system”, and “I think
this app increased the size of my social network in Münster.” On the other
hand, a majority of the participants in both user groups agreed or strongly
agreed with the statements “I feel like part of a community while using this
system” and “I think the contacts made through this app are likely to lead to
new friendships.” Furthermore, a majority of both user groups responded
neutrally to the statements “I feel like I have a lot in common with other
people using this system” and “I found I could rely on the other users of this
system.” The perceived usefulness survey results are summarized in Figure 3.

Figure 3: Perceived Usefulness survey responses: all responses

The two user groups responded oppositely to just one question, the question
about social isolation (see Figure 4). A majority of the forced migrant
participants agreed with the statement “I think this app made me feel less
isolated from others in Münster” while a majority of the freecyclers
disagreed.

Figure 4: Perceived usefulness survey responses: user group comparison

##  7 Discussion

> When I fled from my homeland to Germany, my best friend was my cellphone. It
> really helped me and at the same time I helped many people because of my
> cellphone and my apps. I installed a navigator that worked offline on my
> phone and with maps from all the countries [that we were passing through]. I
> guided more than 100 people from various countries and the people trusted me
> because I already said [that] this [would be] happening like this and we are
> going to a place that is like this and when we got there [it was so].

This quote from a participant in our needs assessment study stresses the value
of location information (and geospatial technologies) to forced migrants.
Besides navigation during migration (scenario mentioned by the participant
above), geospatial technologies can be useful for other stages of the
migration process. Yet, there is a dearth of systematic assessments of this
potential. The data collected and the location-based service presented in the
previous sections can be useful to address this gap. This section now turns to
the implications of the feedback provided by users both on the dimensions of
usability and usefulness, compares features of Geofreebie with those of
existing freecycling platforms, and points at limitations of the work.

###  7.1 Usability

A SUS score of 82 falls into the top quartile of the 206 studies analyzed in
one meta study about SUS scores, and correlates with an adjective rating of
“good” (Bangor et al., 2008) and an “A” on the Sauro-Lewis curved grading
scale (Lewis, 2018). Although a high SUS score does not guarantee
acceptability in the field, it does suggest promise and a lack of major
usability issues. More interestingly, both user groups gave close to the same
average SUS score. This suggests that we successfully tailored the design
solutions to both user groups through the human-centered design process.

###  7.2 Usefulness

Though the results of effective usefulness were promising, one offer completed
is arguably too little to made definitive statements regarding this dimension
of the evaluation. For this reason, we discuss here mainly the results of the
perceived usefulness survey. We do not comment each and every dimension of
social interaction probed, but focus only on the most significant
observations.

#### Creation of new instances of social contact

One participant reported having made a new social contact because of the app
and described the interaction as positive and potentially leading to future
repeat interactions. While this single result is not a significant indicator
of the service’s overall value in regards to generating new social contact
between strangers, it does show the potential and feasibility of the idea.
Participants generally disagreed with the statements “I think using this
system increased my contact with others during the last two weeks,” “I made
contact with people outside of my normal circles through this system,” and “I
think this app increased the size of my social network in Münster” because
they did not successfully complete any freecycling exchanges. Half of the
forced migrants did think that the app increased the size of their social
network, however. This may be due to the modern understanding that a social
network can also be virtual.

#### Creation of a trusting community

Participants’ general agreement with the statements “I feel like part of a
community while using this system” and “I think the contacts made through this
app are likely to lead to new friendships” also shows potential for reducing
social isolation. Furthermore, only one participant disagreed with the
statement “I think I can trust the other users of this system.” Feeling like
part of a community, optimism about making new friendships, and contact with
trustworthy people are all indicators of low social isolation (Cornwell and
Waite, 2009).

#### Summary

Figure 3 illustrates that the freecyling-based approach has created a sense of
trust and a sense of community in most participants, and as such fulfills
Orton (2012)’s desideratum of ‘positive interactions’ between migrants and
other residents in local communities. Even if the two groups provided
occasionally diverging ratings regarding the gains, forced migrants seemed to
have benefited the most. They had higher ratings on the “increased contact
with strangers”, and “increased social network size” dimensions. Thus, a
freecyling-based approach is a promising way to foster social integration of
forced migrants, next to approaches such as computer clubs (Weibert and Wulf,
2010) or codesign workshops (Bustamante Duarte et al., 2018a).

###  7.3 Comparison with existing platforms

While freecycling systems have great potential to reduce the social isolation
of forced migrants, existing platforms have a number of problems in this
regard. Moderators we interviewed openly shared how they applied their bias
towards certain political groups and non-German speakers in their moderation
tasks. The current dominance of Facebook as a platform for freecycling in
Münster means forced migrants have to expose their identity in order to
participate. Our platform gives the user full control over what elements of
their identity they would like to share, thus reducing moderator and peer
bias. Moderators also have less reason to be biased towards foreigners,
because posts are geofenced, which limits the risk of spam from people outside
of the geographic community. Another problem with existing platforms is that
recognizing what offers are nearby requires a geographic knowledge of the
city, knowledge that newcomers inherently lack. Unlike our platform, none of
the existing platforms have integrated maps or location-based features beyond
the scoping of offers by city. Furthermore, the current mono-lingual platforms
alienate those who cannot understand posts and group rules. We designed our
interface to be language and culture agnostic, allowing the user to see rules
and interface elements in their own language and emphasizing pictures and
location information over words of description in posts.

###  7.4 Transferability

A closer, focused, look into user needs is in line with calls from previous
work. Developing a ‘handbook of human needs’ has been identified as one of the
grand challenges of HCI research in (Shneiderman et al., 2016); and Talhouk et
al. (2018) argued that “Technological designs should reflect refugee needs,
experiences, and values” (emphasis added). Though the needs extracted from the
interviews have helped to design a location-based service, they are relevant
to Computer-Human interaction in general, and computer-supported cooperative
work (CSCW) in particular. Freecycling platforms require deliberate
coordinated actions and coordinative practices and hence are CSCW systems in
the sense of (Lee and Paine, 2015; Schmidt, 2011). For instance, Lee and Paine
(2015) introduced seven dimensions of CSCW work, namely synchronicity,
physical distribution, scale, number of communities of practice, nascence,
planned permanence, and turnover. In regard to these dimensions, Geofreebie
has the following properties: it supports asynchronous interactions between
the participants (the interactions start asynchronously in virtual space, and
may end up synchronously in physical space if two users decide to meet to
exchange an artifact); coordinated actions may start with participants at
completely different geographic locations and end with them being at the same
geographic location to complete a transaction; the scale (i.e., number of
participants) is potentially unlimited but was 22 during the evaluation; the
number of communities of practice is at least three (i.e., freecyclers,
moderators, forced migrants), but potentially unlimited as well; coordinated
actions with Geofreebie were still in the nascence phase during the two-week
trial; the planned permanence of the actions undertaken was arguably short-
term given the two-week study; and the turnover was low during the evaluation
of Geofreebie, probably due to the foreseeable time-frame of the experiment
(the turnover of a fully-functional application may be high or low depending
on the actual perceived benefit by the participants).

Previous work (e.g., AbuJarour and Krasnova, 2017; Bustamante Duarte et al.,
2018b) has investigated challenges of forced migrants in Germany, and reported
among other the limited proficiency in German/English as an important
challenge. Our data reflects this as well (see ‘user characteristics’ in the
Supplementary Material), but goes beyond this. Interviews with our
participants have provided evidence that any CSCW system for freecycling with
forced migrants in Germany should support at least five elements (Section
4.4): the shared goal of increasing personal happiness, the shared task of
inviting others into one’s home, the shared tool of smartphones, the shared
risk of uncertainty about strangers, and the shared philosophy of patience and
openness. If these five elements are useful per se, some provide additional
implications for existing research. For instance, the shared goal of
increasing happiness suggests that Desmet and Hassenzahl (2012)’s approach of
possibility-design could be valuable in studying CSCW systems for freecycling
with forced migrants. Desmet and Hassenzahl (2012) proposed possibility-driven
design as an approach that focuses directly on what makes people happy instead
of removing prevailing problems. It breaks free from prevailing issues and
channels creativity into the question: what are desirable future states? The
shared context elements identified in Section 4.4 provide a starting point for
further research along these lines. Also, the shared task of inviting others
into one’s home makes the case for the integration of location-based
information into these CSCW systems, while the shared risk raises a question,
namely: how to increase participants’ (perceived) safety during the use of
these systems? There is a need for research building and deploying CSCW
systems to systematically investigate these questions.

Finally, another important lesson was that recruiting participants from a
Facebook group can be challenging and unfruitful. For example, we posted one
request for interviews in the largest and most active freecycling group, with
more than 27,900 members and on average 17 posts per day. Only 10 members
responded to this call and all but 1 of those backed out before meeting up to
talk. These figures are mentioned to provide a basis for comparison with
similar research efforts across platforms and countries.

###  7.5 Limitations

Our initial two-week trial of the prototype was not long enough to evaluate
the full usefulness of the service. The relatively short duration of the trial
was limiting for three reasons. First, building up a large user community
takes time. Freecycling systems work best when there are a lot of users. The
more users that are actively posting and browsing for offers, the higher the
chance that someone will offer something that another user actually needs.
Second, as we identified in our needs assessment, both freecycling and making
social contacts as a newcomer require good luck and patience. The longer
someone is a member of a freecycling system, the more likely they are to find
something they would like to offer or see an offer of interest. Third,
building relationships takes time. Even when people contact someone through a
freecycling service, it takes time to arrange an in-person meetup. If this
meetup is the first of repeated meetups, it may be a week or more before the
next meetup takes place. In our model where the system is the “introducer,”
extra time is also required for the users to build a relationship of trust
with the system.

Besides, our recruitment strategies were biased towards forced migrant
participants who were already social enough to be out meeting strangers,
meaning less social people were underrepresented. Women and older forced
migrants were also underrepresented, so our results may not fully reflect
their needs and contexts. In addition, the small size of the sample does not
allow generalization to all forced migrants, freecyclers, and moderators in
Germany. Finally, though the implementation of the prototype has focused
primarily on needs related to the creation of social contact and the
accommodation of low language abilities, it is acknowledged that data privacy
aspects are important for the successful adoption of Geofreebie in the long
term. Exploring means to best address location privacy (e.g., how to implement
ephemerality features discussed in (Stroeken et al., 2015; Ataei and Kray,
2017), or give users control over their data through the user interface
elements suggested in (Ataei et al., 2018)) provides nice avenues for future
work.

##  8 Conclusion

This work has assessed the potential of a freecycling-based approach for the
promotion of social integration during forced migrant resettlement. We
identified the context, core tasks, and specific needs of this group in
regards to creating social contacts in their new city. We developed design
solutions for a location-based service that supports forced migrant
resettlement by helping them build their social network. We implemented some
of these solutions and published them as an open-source mobile app to allow
adaptation and continued development. A 2-week trial evaluating the app has
shown the potential of the approach for positive social interactions in a
real-world scenario.

The needs of forced migrants collected through the interviews provide a basis
for evaluating future systems supporting their resettlement. The triangulation
of these needs with characteristics of stakeholders with different profiles
(freecylers and moderators) is a unique feature of our work, and the shared
context elements extracted provide a basis for the design of computer-
supported cooperative systems involving the three types of users. Finally,
supporting resettlement has primarily been done through intercultural computer
clubs or intercultural workshops in the literature (e.g., the come_IN approach
or the organization of co-design workshops bringing together forced migrants
and locals at school). The positive feedback from forced migrants on the
usefulness of our prototype suggests that freecyling-based LBS systems are a
promising approach as well.

There is great opportunity to continue the work started in the research
conducted for this article. First, many of the user requirements developed in
the needs assessment phase of this work remain unimplemented in the prototype
we built, and these could be added to the next version of the Geofreebie app.
Second, the prototype would benefit from the further evaluation on a larger
scale. This evaluation could include not only more participants, but also with
more time and perhaps with trials in other cities, to further understand the
value of a freecycling-based approach for social integration in the long term.

## Acknowledgements

The authors gratefully acknowledge funding from the European Commission
through the Erasmus Mundus Master in Geospatial Technologies (Erasmus+/Erasmus
Mundus program, grant agreement FPA-2012-0191, http://mastergeotech.info/) and
the GEO-C project (H2020-MSCA-ITN-2014, Grant Agreement Number 642332,
http://www.geo-c.eu/).

## Supplementary material

The supplementary material including all appendices is available at
https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.13530689.

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