Exygy

Exygy is THRILLED to announce the next evolution of Bloom Housing! We are officially transitioning to a software-as-a-service model, which will allow us to offer our platform and services to Housing Departments of all sizes in a faster, more standardized, and more cost-effective manner. 🎉 🎊 Check our new site: bloomhousing.com and the four available plans to see which one meets your affordable housing needs! Benefits include: 1️⃣ A robust product focused on usability, accessibility, reliability and security that serves all of the critical stakeholders in the affordable housing ecosystem - housing staff, property managers and developer partners, and home seekers. 2️⃣ A faster pathway to getting started and set up than ever before 3️⃣ Years of accumulated best practices and insights folded into the foundational defaults of the platform 4️⃣ Benefit from the open-source nature of our platform — including the ability to easily access new features built by other Housing Departments in our network at no extra cost! To everyone who has championed Exygy’s work in affordable housing and made this launch possible: technologists, designers, public officials, community organizers, policy experts, affordable housing advocates, and the entire Exygy team past and present — we thank you! 👏 🧡 #SocialImpactTech #AccessibleHousing #GovTech #CiviTech #TechforGood #NewRelease #Innovation #Technology #OpenSource #AffordableHousing #HousingSolutions #BloomHousing

Our team, Exygy, and Housing Navigator Massachusetts, Inc created an excellent resource this summer, see Hannah Gable's post to learn more about some of the insights shared and check out the report at the link below!

🤔 "What does it look like to practice responsible product development with GenAI in affordable housing?" Last week, Exygy had the chance to invite a group of affordable housing professionals and technical experts to a design sprint to discover if there were potential opportunities to leverage GenAI to solve known issues in the space of affordable housing. Let me lead with the fact that we knew there would be a healthy amount of skepticism, myself included, about whether we could identify appropriate use cases to leverage the technology. → We recognize we are serving traditionally marginalized communities who are more vulnerable to systemic inequities. → We understand that within these communities there is a certain mistrust of government services and new technology. → We respect that we are dealing with a history of scarce, dispersed, and biased data sets. 🙌 Given all of that, I was proud of what we were able to accomplish in the limited time we had. → We invited a diverse group of stakeholders representing housing counselors, leasing agents, and city staff with lived experience to speak about what the greatest needs are. → We got to hear from technical experts with experience working in the public sector to explain the promise, risks, and limitations of the technology including Michael Hany Elabd and Neil S. from U.S. Digital Response → Exygy was also able to present our method for how we propose to ensure ethical principles can be maintained with the use of responsible guardrails throughout the product development process. 💎 At a high level, some of what our team presented to ensure a principle-led process included: → Start with framing use cases: We need to weigh the need for AI against its risks and sustainability while identifying those who will be impacted. → Staff ethical champions: We need someone who is tasked, from the outset, with measuring any potential negative impacts as we go. → Invest in community partnership: We need to create a feedback loop with our community partners ensuring we are co-designing and continuing to listen to those who are directly affected. 👏 I’ll be posting a series of takeaways for folks who want to learn more about what we discussed and possibly apply some of what we came up with. Big shoutout to our partners at Google.org and Metropolitan Transportation Commission BAHFA for making it all happen. Thanks to Barry Roeder Gabriel Doss Adam Mansour Melissa Tang(she/her) Morgan Russell (She, Her) Hannah Holloway Ky-Nam Miller Antonella Guidoccio Sean Albert Nick Noreña Caroline Vance Bruister and so many more for making it all happen. #affordablehousing #ai #design #productdevelopment

GenAI application keeps evolving pretty fast in the private sector, but what opportunities can GenAI bring to those of us working in social impact and for the most vulnerable communities? The response is not straightforward and requires an ecosystem and ethical approach. At Exygy we have been working on adjusting our principles and product development cycle to embed responsibility guardrails throughout, including involving the community early on from when we start diving into problems and exploring use cases. That’s why last week in partnership with Google org and BAHFA/ MTC we organized a GenAI Design Sprint to explore if and how the potential integration of Gen AI into our Bloom Housing platform can help us be more effective and impactful. 50+ key stakeholders from the affordable housing ecosystem (city and county staff, housing counselors and advocates, developers and property managers, data and technology experts) joined us to: 🤓 learn more about GenAI possibilities and limitations considering fair housing and experiments in the public sector by experts from Google.org, TechEquity Collaborative, Exygy, MTC, U.S. Digital Response, Michael Hany Elabd, Hannah Holloway, Vu-Bang Nguyen, Ky-Nam Miller, and Neil Shash respectively, ⚠️ get inspired to take a greater role in the responsibility journey through an overview of the steps and tools that will be available for them to keep us accountable by Jesse James Arnold from Exygy and myself, 💡engage in insightful discussions and co-create solutions together through multi-disciplinary and multi-sector break-out rooms that focused on different problems. I am so thankful for the time, collaborative spirit and commitment of every participant that made this Design Sprint a success! I’m also very grateful for the trust and dedication of everyone involved in the making: Barry Roeder, Gabriel Doss, Adam Mansour, Melissa Tang(she/her), @Morgan Russell (She, Her), Jesse James Arnold, Sean Albert, Nick Noreña, Vu-Bang Nguyen, Anna Gibbons. Looking forward to continuing this journey and seeing the incredible impact of our collective efforts! #GenAI #DesignSprint #Innovation #techforgood

We are so excited about the return of the Safety Net Innovation Summit hosted by the Center for Care Innovations! This event brings together thought leaders and change-makers to improve communities, health, and well-being. Get ready to collaborate on actionable solutions that make a real impact. Registration is open – secure your spot today and be part of shaping a healthier, more resilient future for all. We hope to see you there! Learn more: https://lnkd.in/gW6ZhMY2 #HealthcareInnovation #EquityInHealthcare #TechnologyForGood #HealthcareAccess

💡 “How inclusive is our discovery?” When building accessible products most of us spend the bulk our time considering the inclusiveness and accessibility of the final deliverable. As we start to include more people with disabilities into the discovery process, we need to do the work to avoid excluding community members and partners during planning and ideation. → How are we conducting async communication? Some messaging platforms aren’t as accessible for stakeholders to engage with during project planning. → How are we sharing information during meetings? Slideshows are are primarily visual and mostly inaccessible to people with visual disabilities. → How are we ideating during co-design activities? If we traditionally use a whiteboarding tool like Miro or Figjam, have we paid attention to screen reader users?  🔍 A couple of things our team at Exygy has started to roll out when we are collaborating with community stakeholders with disabilities: → Learn about the diverse needs of our participants. Ask about their individual experiences, levels of comfort with technology and any accessibility accommodations. → Find out what their preferred tools are to support essential planning activities including messaging, shared documents and scheduling in order to meet their accessibility needs. → If we’re running ideation sessions, we do the work to support inclusive participation including, sending out agendas ahead of time, providing additional facilitators, and creating an accessible ideation format which includes screen reader support, large print and closed captions as needed. 💎 Hope this is helpful to others looking to include more people with disabilities into product discovery. Big thanks and appreciation to folks and inspiration: → Thanks again to our partners at LightHouse for the Blind and Visually Impaired including Sean Dougherty for their continued expertise in developing an inclusive process. → Inspired by the Guide to CoDesign by JFA Purple Orange which has a detailed list of activities to consider when co-designing. https://lnkd.in/gZDupBED → Also am learning so much from the work of KA McKercher and Cloe Benz who recently published a case study on how exactly to conduct inclusive co-design activities. https://lnkd.in/gFp7aiYv #accessibility #ideation #ux #codesign #discovery

Thoughtful Design Tip #15 Inclusive Delivery Activities Your delivery team members can each do their part from visual design to engineering and into quality assurance. If visual design assets are required, your teams can work together to ensure that WCAG guidelines continue to be considered and documented. Details that can be included are heading reading order, focus order/state, aria, touch targets, and alt text. The engineering team can pick up accessibility stories from a backlog and utilize automated testing tools to ensure compliance. Accessibility tickets should include acceptance criteria informed by product, design, and engineering. After engineers have delivered accessibility stories, these stories are ready for QA and assessment. Conduct follow-up compatibility testing with accessibility partners to ensure the original issues have been resolved. ---- This tip was written by Exygy designer, Jesse James Arnold! For more on Thoughtful Design, check out our website: https://lnkd.in/gstVSDXa #Design #HumanCenteredDesign #TechforGood #DesignforGood #SocialImpactTech #Impact #Framework

“Research is fundamental to developing government services that better and more equitably meet the needs of communities” 👏 Couldn’t be prouder of Sijia Yan and the rest of the Civiform team for presenting to a standing room only session of attendees at Code for America Summit 2024 💎 The team presented successful and repeatable practices for working with community members including: - Partnering with trusted community organizations for recruiting - Prioritizing opportunities to co-design - Developing a community advisory panel for ongoing accountability Shoutout to Long Dinh Danielle Katz Matt Sprenke and the rest of the Civiform team at Exygy #cfasummit2024

A mini-reunion with a group of Digital Services Coalition founders and members at this year’s Code for America 🥰 Carla Briceno, Bixal Zach Berke, Exygy John Foster, Fearless Traci Walker, Digital Services Coalition Dan Levenson, Agile Six And more!

Dear everyone going to the Code For America Summit tomorrow, Don't forget to connect with the Exygy team! A handful of Exygy folks will be attending and would love to "say hi". Contact us at growth@exygy.com or message us on LinkedIn to ensure we don't miss you. We will also be presenting with CiviForm on Thu May 30, at 11:30. We are so excited to see you tomorrow! #CodeForAmerica #CFA #CFASummit #BusinessAsAforceForGood #BCorp #Tech #Website #SocialImpactTech #TechforGood