Introducing Foodo
An awesome solution for unit donors and food banks to fight hunger together
At-A-Glance✨
Team
Gina G
Haopeng L
Lucy(Xinyi) Ye
My Roles
Product Designer
User Researcher
Timeline
01/2022-03/2022
Tool Used
Figma
User Testing.com
Miro Board
Foodo is a two-sided mobile app for both food donors and food banks to create an efficient food donation process which will help decrease food bank staff workload in addition to maximizing food distribution to those in need.
Donors are incentivized to continue donating by earning coupons for restaurants and grocery stores when they donate using the Foodo app.
Donors are incentivized to continue donating by earning coupons for restaurants and grocery stores when they donate using the Foodo app.
By building a community with their donors, food banks can update events and make announcements about volunteer opportunities, food in need, etc.
Match donations with food bank needs
Incentivization for better user retention and engagement
Build a donation community
Insufficient Inventory Across All Donation Categories
My friend Nina was relying on food banks during the pandemic. She had seen a dramatic increase in the number of people queuing up for food at the U-District Food Bank. She had to wait for about 1 hour to get her food, and most of the time she cannot get the food she wants.
This sparked my passion to help people like my friend Nina receive the food they want. To solve insufficient inventory, our initial thought is pretty straightforward: designing a system to track the inventory so that volunteers or staff do not need to walk back and forth to check the availability of certain foods.
Hi-Fi Prototype on Figma
Highlights
We Are Cheerleaders for Donors
Foodo conceptualizes the abstract idea of donating an amount of food into an estimate of how many families they have helped. Users would feel very satisfied and continue to donate to help more people.
In addition, we incentivize donors to continue donating by earning coupons for restaurants and grocery stores. This is a win-win situation for all parties.
Highlights
Easy Donations Match Food Bank Needs
Al recognition can automatically analyze the photos donors take to categorize donations and calculate servings, which speeds up the donation reservation process. Based on the result, we would recommend a food bank match with your donation.
Once the donation reservation is confirmed, the user will receive a confirmation code along with details of how and where to drop off the donation.
Highlights
No worries! Zero complications in managing and tracking data
With a few taps, food bank workers or volunteers may update the food status, fundraising targets, and basic information quickly and easily.
The tracking system could help donors to quickly understand what foods are in need and put in their best effort to help. Also, food banks could use the system to manage their inventory and make predictions and decisions based on historical data.
From Idea to Execution💡👩💻
Wireframing The Solution
Paper Wireframe - Donor Side
Paper Wireframe - Food Bank Side
Once we have a better grasp of the needs and pain points of our users, we started to brainstorm and sketch for possible solutions to make the donation process for individual donors more effective and enjoyable. We decided our key functions of this app would be:
Establish an online donor and food bank community for effective communication
Solve the problem of uneven food inventory through data monitoring system
Develop data visualization to monitor the status of food and monetary contributions
Encourage food and monetary donations from individual donors
Key
Functions
1
2
3
4
White-boarding with my teammates
User Testing
We conducted 15 unmoderated tests on both sides of the platform on usertesting.com, and we also conducted 8 moderated tests via zoom. During the testing process, we were able to view the Foodo App from a new perspective through the lens of users.
Donor Insights + Redesign
After
11/13 Participants Said: Need Motivation to Donate
Before
9/13 Participants said: Confusion with Icons
After
Before
Food Bank User Insights + Redesign
After
8/12 Participants Said: Discoverability Issue of Editing Mode
Before
After
4/12 Participants: Interpretation and Motivation Issue of Data Visualization
Before
What users think about our product🎉
94% of the testing participants mentioned that they though this app is very meaningful and they believe the app will motivate more people to donate!
94%
Takeaways✍️
Content Strategy: 1. Easy for Users to Understand 2. Build Reliability
The first thing that I learned about content strategy is that we should never make it too difficult for people to read and understand the functions. Users would not wish to take a very long time to read many words in order to understand how it works. We used to try our best to explain the function, but we turned out to be long-winded. One good example would be when we were trying to explain why they could take a photo of their donation items. In the original version, the instruction is too wordy. However, when we replaced it with "Scan the items you wish to donate", the instruction became concise and easy for the user to understand.
The second thing that I learned is that we should choose words that build connections with users and a sense of reliability. One case is when we try to use "Money Donation" first instead of "Contribution". One user mentioned that "Money Donation" might give her the impression that food banks only want donors money. We wanted to be mindful and intentional with our words, so we conducted A/B testing on three separate versions (Money Donation, Fundraising, and Contribution) to address this issue. We ended up choosing "Contribution" as the result of the testing.
Think as Our Users, Not as Designers
In the beginning, I always have a mindset of how I should design this to meet the goal that I want to achieve, but I forgot to think about why do users want to donate through our app, what benefits they would be interested in having. As a designer, I need to stand in the users' shoes to think about their stories and problems, and what kind of design would help users to reach their goals.
Difference between moderated and unmoderated tests
During the testing process, I learned the advantages and disadvantages of both moderated and unmoderated tests. For unmoderated tests, we could test people from different backgrounds that we normally could not have access to. And since they could not see us, they can give very honest feedbacks. As for moderated tests, it is much easier to ask a lot of follow-up questions and receive deeper insights from the follow-up questions.
Although our initial thought might speed up the process of distributing food to recipients, we still feel uncertain about how much this idea could help. So we decided to interview the food bank resource manager as well as several food bank donors, and induvisuals who haven’t donate before to trace this problem back to its source.
Through our interviews, we gradually unraveled this puzzle and were able to determine our users, stand in their shoes to walk through their journey, and identify four main issues that caused the insufficient and unbalanced donation inventory.
Persona - Donor
Persona - Food Bank RM
Understanding Our Users
I want to help but I don’t know what they need....
We need fresh produced food, but how we inform our donors.
We need fresh produced food, but how we inform our donors.
Why do they need money? I thought they get money from government.
We really need money to purchase food and maintain daily operation.
I want to donate food, but I don’t know where to drop it off. I’m too busy with work and family, so I don’t want to spend too much time on this.
I did not think of donating food...I usually just wait for my unwanted foods to expire and then throw them away.
We sometimes get too much canned food, but we are in urgent need of produce food.
Individual donors don’t know what food is in need
Donors don’t know that food banks rely on fundraising
Need motivation to donate
Food bank inventory is unsustainable
There is no platform available for food banks to immediately update donors on what they need the most on a daily basis.
One thing we did not know before and found out during our interview with the resource manager is that a significant part of the food inventory comes from grocery purchases. In order to offset rising food prices and yet satisfy the increased demand, food banks need more budget for grocery purchases and to keep the organizations operating. However, a lot of people were not aware of the need for monetary donations to food banks.
People who have never donated food before told us the reason they did it was not because they don’t like to donate but because they don’t feel motivated enough to donate if they just drop off the food without any feedback, and they also need clear direction on how to donate.
The food bank doesn’t construct a database to track each item. Most of the time the donations are unstable, therefore the items shown on the inquiry form may be unavailable.
We discovered that the fundamental problem is that the communication between donors and food banks is inefficient and ambiguous, which causes confusion and undermines motivation.
Our goal was to create a two-sided platform for direct communication between donors and food staff and a stable food inventory and ultimately encourage long-term contributions.
Reframing The Problem
How might we match individual donors’ donations with food banks’ needs?
Building a channel for effective, efficient, and enjoyable donation process
Solution proposal
