Food Hero
Nourishing Together
Role
UX Designer
Timeline
2 Weeks
Team Size
4 Person Team
Tools
Figma, Google Workspace, Notion, Zeplin, Otter, Zoom
Overview
Food Hero is dedicated to simplifying the process of donating and receiving food for individuals who seek to participate in these activities but encounter challenges such as time constraints or the potential for social stigma when accepting donated items. We are committed to filling a void in the current market by creating a safe and welcoming space designed to serve the unique requirements of two distinct user groups.
The Challenge
-
Create an opportunity for two groups of users that accommodates to their needs.
-
Optimizing pickups and dropoff manner to maximize the variety of types of foods donated
-
Ability to give users control of donation experience from start to finish
Diving into the Problem Space
How might we help reduce household food waste while helping people with a tight grocery budget?
Opportunities
Laying out the ground work
-
Encourage individuals to reduce their household food waste, which contributes to
half of the food wasted in the United States, while also fighting food insecurity. -
What factors are most important to those who wish to donate?
-
What is the daily routine like for shoppers?
-
How do people who wish to engage in donation services go about the process?
Our Solution
_gif.gif)
Food Hero 🥕
Introducing Food Hero
Food Hero, a dedicated IOS app designed to create a streamline process for sharing food within your community. Providing users with features that fall in line with their daily routines, creating a seamless experience for users who wish to donate or receive donated goods.
Features
-
Grocery expiration tracker to maximize amount of fresh produce/goods provided to those in need
-
Location tracker to determine nearest locations to dropoff/pickup
-
Give donators the opportunity earn Hero Points & convert to coupons
-
Rate and review gift bags
Research
Synthesize
Develop
Deliver
Phase 1: Research
Analyzing food waste
Food waste is responsible for 10% of greenhouse gas emissions (that's more than the whole aviation industry).
Grocery prices are predicted to increase by 8.6 percent in 2023, including number of pantry and refrigerator staples.
We waste 2.8 billion tons of food annually, while 828 million people go hungry every day.
Lower-income households experience above-average inflation because of their higher proportional spending on food and housing.
Scoping out similiarites
By creating a feature analysis of apps or websites in the food space, the team and I wanted a better grasp of the features that are essential to provide in this market. While also getting a wide scope of view of what sort of essentials are lacking in this same market.
Findings
-
Lack of donation centers drop off points
-
Access to any refrigerated food or refrigerator device is missing
-
Grocery stores play a major role in the being the medium between those wish to donate and
Screener Surveys & Interviews
By creating and sending out a screener survey, I was able to pick up on our target audience's weekly budgets, desire to donate, people who would be open to receiving donated goods, etc. I was able to collect 29 responses, where I was able to recruit 10 people for remote interviews. I would then divide these 10 people into two groups, the donators and the receivers. This would give us the insights needed to assist both users of the app.
The Donators
Affinity Maps
With Affinity Mapping, this methodology helped in pinpointing various factors that prevented both of our target audiences from participating in either donating or receiving donations. By dividing our design team into two, we each managed to place care and attentiveness when sorting out our map.
The Receivers
Phase 2 : Synthesize
User Research And Synthesis
After assessing and going through our affinity mapping. There were some notable quotes that stood out to us while conducting our interviews. Although our team split up to conduct these remote interviews throughout various times of the week, there was one thing we could not forget. We are designing a single app but we have two target audiences we need to have empathy for. This is something we needed to consider whenever categorizing or reviewing our data.
The Donators
The Receivers
Takeaways
Receivers want to be able to receive donations comfortably and conveniently
Receivers are mostly unaware of where or when they can pickup donations.
Donors are looking for ways ways to keep track of their groceries and their expiration dates.
Donors see donating food as an inconvenient and time consuming task.
​
Receivers are mostly unaware of where or when they can pickup donations.
Personas
Personas helped me limit my findings to Brian, a med student on a budget trying to survive the hectic college student life. And Lupe, a busy financial advisor, trying to find time out of her busy day to complete various tasks while still explore what the world has to offer.
Phase 3: Design
Sketches
When gathering for our design studio sessions, I sketched various ideas onto a whiteboard alongside the rest of my team. Creating variations of screens key to taking on the problem head on. From the onboarding process screen, selecting a store near you screen, and reviewing your pickup.
The design studio session sketches shows the flow of a user starting from the onboarding process up to reviewing their pickup
Heading into the MidFi | HiFi
Task 1
Select fruits on the app to donate at your nearby grocery store.
Users demonstrated confusion when having to select the fruit before donation option
Users navigated to community events section below to try and complete task of donating bananas
Task 2
Please get free fruits at the grocery store you love the most.
Users expressed confusion as to whether they successfully set up pickup order
During observations, multiple users were thrown off by complete drop off option below pickup details
Task 3
Review your most recent experience on the app
Multiple users demonstrated unawareness of having to fully scroll down to rate pickup order
Although users located most recent order, multiple people mentioned they would have liked to know what was it they picked up before
Users believed the rating system to have already been filled out with preset 5 stars
Redesigned produce option buttons to highlight bottom text when selected
After combining "Cook" and "Extend" options into one option, "Recipes", I enlarged button size and positioning of Donate button
Added in complete pickup button to give confirmation to user that order was successfully placed
Removed complete drop off prompt and included "Instructions & Accessibility" feature to assist users on how to pickup their order
Removed order details from review screen and gave review section its own dedicated screen
Added in original snapshot of produce donated so users can get a visual of original order they picked up
Removed fill for star rating system to visually assist users by adding in their own rating
My Findings
By running usability tests on our mid and high fidelity prototypes, I and the team were able to carefully assess what worked for each of our target audiences. Placing testers in the shoes of both donators and receivers, I was able to view gather and observe helpful information and that showed our seamless design working in action. Of all the tasks given, our users had little to no difficulty when completing all of them. Also, from sketching to creating the high fidelity designs, I always designed with empathy in mind. Through this I was able to see inconveniences from both sides and was able to design a better product for our target audience and ensuring that the experience would be both seamless and beneficial.
Bringing Food Hero to life
Style Guide
Color Palette
C4DDC3
FEDAB0
2E5739
FCFFFC
C77610
FFFCF8
When the time finally arrived to generate a color palette for Food Hero, various ideas were thrown around in the team. But one factor played a major role in choosing these particular colors. After getting to better understand our target audience, I now knew the environments, emotions, and prospects that they endured on a daily basis. I wanted to make sure the colors chosen fit slightly earthy tones that could mimic organic produce but could also add delight to the users experience.
Text Style
H1
Favorite Stores/Reduce Food Waste
Jost - Bold - 28px/28px Leading - #000000
H2
Upcoming Community Events
Jost - Bold - 21px/21px Leading - #000000
H3
Savings/Groceries
Jost - Bold - 17px/17px Leading - #000000/#FFFFFF
Body
Quality of Food/Overall Experience
Poppins - Regular - 16px - #000000
The journey
Reflection
This project was a bit different from what I have previously worked on or viewed from other case studies. It gave me the challenge of making sure that my empathy never strayed away from two users. Designing an app for two groups of users with different actions in mind was a task I have yet to take on. But this new responsibility did not hinder me from the main problem that was formulated. Aside from the scheduling issues we first encountered when setting up our interviews with two groups, all of the pieces of from the double diamond design process fell into place. I fell the final product we delivered successfully checks all the boxes with great features that adhere to the needs of millions of people in this country facing similar issues.