The Hope Booth is newly installed in front of The Hangry Plate in central Seoul's multicultural Haebangchon neighborhood, March 9. Korea Times photo by Jon Dunbar
Gloria Umanah poses with the first international Hope Booth outside The Hangry Plate in central Seoul's multicultural Haebangchon neighborhood, March 10. Korea Times photo by Jon Dunbar
A hopeful new installation appeared outside The Hangry Plate restaurant in central Seoul's multicultural Haebangchon neighborhood following a ceremony on March 9.
The Hope Booth is a colorful reimagining of a phone booth, upgraded with a touch screen that allows visitors to access various well-being services for free. It is also easily height-adjustable, intended to accommodate children and people in wheelchairs, along with people of all heights.
The initiative is the work of Gloria Umanah alongside Atlanta based nonprofit, Hope Booth. There are nine permanently installed Hope Booths around the U.S., with plans to install another 100 over the next two years.
The Hope Booth brings to the public a vital resource for extending help to vulnerable community members — not just those seeking mental health care, but also assistance with things like housing, food and employment. This first booth is installed in a visible location, but that's the point: to bring these resources out into the open and make it more normal to seek them out.
"That's the reality of some mental health resources. People see it as a reactive measure, but really, it should be a preventative measure," Umanah said. "I'm not waiting until my car has fallen apart to get the oil changed — I'm getting the oil changed regularly as maintenance."
The booth uses targeted sound technology so that users can easily follow along while ignoring distractions such as passing vehicles.
"Usually people, as they're engaging with the Hope Booth, they decide, 'I am really locked into this experience,' and it's immersive," Umanah said. "They're not typically even checking around, like, 'Who's watching me?' Maybe at first, in the first 15 seconds or so, but the goal is to draw them in, and that usually happens sooner than later."
A mat bears the message "Need Hope? Stand here." at the base of the Hope Booth, welcoming users to give it a try, March 9. Korea Times photo by Jon Dunbar
A Hope Booth experience can last around three minutes at minimum. When one steps up to the Hope Booth, it invites the user in with some simple queries guided by prerecorded messages from one of a handful of human presenters, referred to as guides.
A guide helps the user through various steps in prerecorded video clips at the Hope Booth, March 9. Korea Times photo by Jon Dunbar
"One of the big things we care about is having individuals with lived experience," Umanah said of the guides, "because it's one thing to have an actor, and it's another thing to have a person who has a lived experience with mental health in some capacity to deliver those messages, because there's a form of authenticity that's there, and a form of genuineness, and I think typically that can be perceived very easily for someone who does engage with the Hope Booth."
The interface directs the user through a simple decision tree, first asking for language selection and then presenting the Hope Meter, which asks the user to gauge how hopeful they're feeling. The user is then presented with an "emotive word bank" and asked to select from a list of emotions how they feel at that moment. Next, the guide accompanies the user through breathing exercises, then a 90-second hope message. At the end of the experience, the Hope Meter is presented again, to see if there has been a shift.
This content was developed by what Umanah referred to as a "science board," which includes "a good mix of psychologists, neurologists, therapists and social workers from different backgrounds."
After going through the interactive video part of the experience, the user can access a menu of community resources, including where to go for further help.
The Hope Booth offers a directory of various care and community resources, March 10. Korea Times photo by Jon Dunbar
Umanah explained that these resources are compiled based on geo-tracking in a five-mile radius of the booth. They also try to only provide resources rated four stars or higher.
"One thing we want to make sure we're doing is prioritizing excellence in the resources that we're providing," she said.
There is some work to be done, as some of the resource categories have few entries or none at all.
Umanah emphasized that while data is collected, none of it is personalized. She said the selections on the Hope Meter and any changes between the preexperience measure and the postexperience are interesting data for the operation of the Hope Booth. They also gain meaningful insights into the specific resources accessed by users. There are no cameras or other monitoring devices.
"In our prototype days, we had a GoPro that we built into the whole booth because we created a documentary based on people's experiences," she said. "But we know how people are with technology in general. They feel like someone's monitoring their experience. It's not going to be as authentic or effective, so we don't use cameras."
Currently, the Hope Booth operates in English and Spanish. Adding Korean may be in the future, but it would only come after some major expansion work.
"Ideally, it'd be great to add Korean, but it is quite an undertaking. We've got to translate everything, we've got to refilm things with Korean actors, we've got to have a production studio to help produce it. And then we have to have our editor put it all together and have our engineer put it into the whole booth," Umanah said. "So it is quite a number of steps, but it's not impossible to get the right community together to pull it off."
Haebangchon proved to be an ideal location for the first Hope Booth in Korea — not to mention the first one permanently installed outside the U.S. — as it is a residential area with a high population of English-speaking residents. So far, it has attracted many curious testers, both Korean and foreign.
The reason Hope Booth came to this particular location traces back to Umanah's university days — her friend and former classmate, Waynette Angerville-Han, has been living in Korea for about seven or eight years, where her husband, Drew Han, owns and operates The Hangry Plate.
Waynette Angerville-Han, Gloria Umanah and Drew Han pose with the Hope Booth outside The Hangry Plate in central Seoul's multicultural Haebangchon neighborhood, March 9. Courtesy of Arthur Kwon/@deepintomyseoul
"I was planning a trip to Japan, and I was like, wait, I can't be in Japan and not stop by Korea," Umanah said. "I had already planned to come just to visit Waynette, spend time with her, and then it clicked maybe three weeks ago — you guys have a restaurant, which means you have land, which makes things a lot easier to pull off."
"This is our first international, permanent installation. So that was a big feat that happened very quickly."
She said she's open to expanding Hope Booths across the peninsula. "It's really just a matter of finding the right partners, right funding and the right locations," she said.
The Hope Booth receives funding from individual donors, sponsorships and grants. "The Seoul booth was specifically sponsored by The Movement, our 100 percent monthly donor community where 100 percent of every dollar given goes directly towards manufacturing, installing and maintaining Hope Booths in prominent areas," Umanah said.
Visit hopebooth.org for more information, or hopebooth.org/themovement to learn more about donating.