Our IDEO.org team visited Cleveland, Ohio, as part of the first stage of our research for a project with the Rockefeller Foundation to understand and capture the human experience of two major challenges for low-income people in the US, long-term unemployment and the youth employment skills gap. Here's an update from our team.

Cleveland is a shrinking city (in population terms) with growing ambitions. New manufacturing start-ups join an expanding healthcare and insurance industry in luring young people back into the urban core. The heavy snow and headline-making cold front upon our arrival set the scene for an intense week talking with people at kitchen tables, suburban office parks, downtown skyscrapers, the occasional donut shop, and even a 400-bed homeless shelter for men.

Meet some of the people we met during our human-cenetered design research in Cleveland:

Barry, a young man rising.

Barry has nearly completed his pharmacy-technician training and is interviewing for jobs at local pharmacies. He still pulls overnight shifts at the Target warehouse, but he makes it work. He aims to earn a steady income to support his fiancee and one-year-old daughter, and later he plans on the 5-6 years of college it takes to become a pharmacist. Ultimately, Barry hopes to become a good provider for his family and the kind of father he himself did not have growing up: “I want my daughter to say, ‘My dad is smart... my dad did this for me,’ because I could never could.”

Sean and Callie, a couple fighting the odds. 

Sean and Callie split time between their respective parents’ homes, struggling to raise their three year-old son and desperately seeking some kind of stability – a home and career path – but are finding their lack of experience and education to be a big barrier. Both Sean and Callie have a notion that one needs connections to get a job, but don’t really know anyone in the fields they’re interested in. Sean’s strategy for finding work is based loosely on the few jobs he’s had, such as carpet installation, although he’s not particularly passionate about them. Sean doesn't seem to have a good idea about the range of work available to him beyond what he’s already tried. Sean fills out so many applications each day online that he can’t keep track. However, he doesn’t have a voicemail set up on his phone currently, and his computer is broken.

Rebecca, underemployed but scraping by.

Rebecca has a resume for three different types of jobs: office, hospitality and manufacturing and she’s systematic in their use. Starting on Sunday, she works through all the paper’s classified ads until the Thursday paper comes out. She currently has two part-time jobs, one in a government administrative office, another packing boxes at a factory. Although she has two college degrees and a thirst for work, she has been denied even a pizza delivery job. How does she think employers see her? Too old for the service industry. Too much of a woman for manufacturing. And a criminal record and bad credit has complicated office jobs and retail. “I feel stuck on glue,” she says. But, please “no pity party.”

Up next, the team heads to Los Angeles and Houston. Stay tuned for an update.