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Project Overview
The Problem
Food waste is a significant issue. In the US. and Canada, 30-40% of the food supply goes to waste, equaling more than 20 pounds of food waste per person per month, yet millions go hungry night after night. Not only is it an issue of waste, but it has an adverse effect on the environment and Global Warming.
About
Big Impact is a small start-up based in Chicago dedicated to ending world hunger once and for all through the power of community while leveraging the sharing economy. Their long-term plan is to eradicate hunger worldwide began in 2013.
The Goal
Big Impact wants to connect with food service entities that have a regular surplus of food and be able to distribute it to charities ready to receive and redistribute meals.
My Impact
Design an intuitive, easy-to-use application that allows organizations to donate food efficiently and smoothly. Ease of service is key in the experience to ensure repeat use so users can donate their food in a timely, safe, and easy way.
Research
Looking at the user, I wanted to understand how they felt about
taking the extra step to donate food rather than tossing it.
What would incentivize them to donate food and keep it out
of landfills?
User and Research Goals
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What would make users keen to use an app to donate food that would otherwise be thrown away?
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How would users be motivated to provide food donations without transportation or adequate storage?
There was a common consensus that users felt the satisfaction of goodwill by donating food knowing to whom or where the food ended up - did it go to shelters, the homeless, or was it just thrown away?
Users liked the idea of seeing their impact made on others by donating unwanted, and to the environment.
User Research
Users who worked at establishments noted that food that appeared to be usable was thrown away, despite the packaging saying it was expired.
Much of the time storage was an issue, and priority went to food that was going to be used by the establishment.
Of users stated that they believe their establishment would donate food knowing that it would ultimately help people or go towards a good cause.
Of users mentioned that someone coming to pick up the food at a predetermined time would help make the process of donating easier.
Competive Analysis &
Market Research
Diving into quantitative research to look at some competitors, there were apps with excellent qualities and goals of encouraging consumers to donate, but some had too many steps in the process or long verification timelines such as one with a 24-hour window which could easily lose
the user's engagement.
The summary of findings below shows the competitive landscape of apps with similar goals.
Feeding America had the most similarities to my vision for the app, of which included information on their app regarding on best practices for safely donating food, and feedback to its users on how their food contribution is making an impact.
Define
User Study & Persona
User persona Xavier represents a user who has a keen willingness and desire to help fight the food against the food wastage crisis whilst working at an establishment that discards the excess, based on the average user surveyed.
It became apparent that users who had donated or worked in a food service establishment, felt compelled to do more than just toss out food that could have had a second life.
User, Business & Technical Goals
With the User and Business goals in mind, it was time to look at what the technical goals would be and all three commonalities.
*The ability to make monetary donations and track C02's saved, though not a current necessity, are technical goals that will come later.
Sitemap
In keeping with designing an app that would be intuitive and easy to use, I looked at other apps and their layout, and focused on finding a way to deliver a similar layout that could deliver only the most necessary information.
User Flow
One of the business goals was the ability to have mulitple people added to one account, i.e restaurant, hotel or large organization.
The user flow here is depicting an individual onboarding and creating a profile for the first time who is part of an organization/business
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Task Flow
Emphasized below is an individual signing up for the first time, as part of a business (hotel) and donating on behalf of that business (i.e sous chef or kitchen staff making a donation of leftover food or produce from an event that had too much)
Low Fidelity Wireframes
App ideation started with three rough ideas on how to best layout all of the necessary elements on each page, so the user could
make a quick and effortless donation.
Sign Up
Account Creation
Make a donation
High-Level Design
Goals and Objectives
Big Impact needed branding and vision. They also wanted
a responsive landing page that could be shared with potential donors
I started with a vision board to pull together relevant ideas for
the app, and to find and ideal colour palette.
Vision board
UI Kit
From the colours and fonts put together in the above mood board, I created a similar colour palette to give the feeling of nature and earthiness, which would remind users of the food/environment element, and stuck with a sans serif font.
I wanted a palette that could blend in with the natural colours of the fruit and vegetable icons.
Logo Design
When relaying an image, two things came to mind.
1. One was where the food would ultimately end up - on the plates of those in need vs the landfill -
2. The other was with an emphasis of the ease that a food donation truck would have on the user.
Due to the simplicity of the design elements and mission Big
Impact was going after, I chose the former.
Landing Page
High fidelity wireframes and Prototype
When testing, I wanted to see if the app I designed was as seamless
and intuitive as I had hoped. I did feel a bit of a designer's block, so I decided to carry out testing on the UI and the flow before I changed around any more elements.
I implemented an unmoderated test with 11 participants using Maze. Feedback was received and iterations were made to the three flows were made.
Testing and Iterations
Original
The buttons on the first screen didn't
feel right to some users.
Users felt confused with the direction they were to go, given the number of buttons that felt like tasks on this page.
Iterations
I simplified the buttons and moved the food safety information over to the user profile page.
I decided to change the donation window from 72 hours to 48 hours to limit food sitting and waiting too long before it's received and then redistributed.
For cleaner UI I removed the 'back' button
and replaced it on the top left of the frame.
The original page felt too busy to users and required to much decisive action, so I decided to simplify it and offer chunks of time slots for users to choose from.
The preselected times only gives users the option to donate over the following
48 hours.
It was important to include the food safety act, and I added it in toward the end before users
submitted their donation.
50% of users felt the agreement page was text-heavy. I reduced the overwhelm and made it into a button that would drop down to a scroll through, and then they could agree.
It was bit difficult to find users that donated
food through an app, or worked in an establishment
that donated leftover food to a food bank even through
survey platforms like Quora I relied more so
on other research and quantitative data.
When it came to donating food, I wanted a screen
that informed users what they could and couldn't donate
before going through the donation process and realizing
their donation didn't meet the criteria. Knowing
what was the most vital information to include here was
tricky, as there are several food safety methods to follow
and only so much that could be included before the
user lost interest after reading.
Challenges faced
1.
2.
Next Steps
There was ideation that came about when putting together the flows and ways that the app could be even more appealing to users, some of which included:
1. Adding an option for users to see what their environmental impact would look like under their donations tab. Include what the
2. Finding ways to retain users. Is it enough for them to see the positive impact they are making by donating, or is it the ease of having drivers come and collect their donations in 2 days or less which helps with storage issues? Would users want to be able to share the impact they are making onto their social platforms, perhaps providing tax incentives or the opportunity to be recognized in their community for their service?
3. Creating a profile for the drivers so they know when and where to make collections. Adding an automation that would tell them what the total quantity of food in their pick ups would be so they can be efficient with filling up their van, and not run out of space.
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