Meet the Team

Special Thanks! to each of these team members. The three of these guys are fantastic end-to-end designers. Jereme has a niche for narrowing down big visions by creating amazing sketches and wireframes. If you are looking for an amazing all around UX Designer, Roberto is your guy. He can get anything done within the UX scope at a very high level. Kyle creates some of the most visually pleasing products you can find on the interwebs. I’m useful for shoutouts.

Idea & Scope

Time frame: 2 weeks. The project category: social impact. The team’s draw: resource distribution. We brainstormed several topics. We collectively decided to focus on food distribution. Why? The misallocation of food in Los Angeles… wait a minute, not just in Los Angeles, but California…wait a minute, not just in California, but the US…wait a minute, not just in the US, but the entire world is a problem. A major problem. It affects everyone and everything on the planet (we will get more into that in the research).

We wanted to kill three birds with one stone. We wanted to create a multi-service product that would reduce food waste, help feed the needy, and create a more sustainable future. We wanted to engineer a solution that could be implemented at a global level. But first we did ourselves a favor. Having experience in business architecture and vision, I immediately saw our eyes were getting bigger than our stomach- we had to scale down. We focused locally. We put our efforts into building a successful model with a handful of key players which could eventually be scaled up to the state level, country level, and ultimately global level.

Research Is Key

Defining the problem, unmasking the key players, and understanding their frustrations

Let’s Look At The Data

40% of food produced in the US is not eaten 
— Natural Resource Defense Council

Americans toss out enough food to fill 730 football stadiums per year — Department of Agriculture

Americans throw away $165 billion worth of food yearly (that’s 20 lbs per person a month) — Natural Resource Defense Council

15–25% of food bought by Americans is thrown out. Imagine going to the grocery store, loading up on 4 bags worth of delicious groceries, purchase your food, walk to your car, but before you get there you throw one of your bags out— “Just Eat It” (2015)

Since 1974, food waste has risen 50% 
— USDA

In 2013, 49.1 million food insecurity 49.1 million people lived in food insecure house holds
 — USDA

Food waste is extremely harmful to our planet, specifically, stacking waste in landfills creates methane which is 20 x’s more potent then CO2- the leading cause of global warming 
 — “Just Eat It” (2015)

Defining the Problem, Determining Direction

Before we started brainstorming solutions, we wanted to look at the main players involved. We started at the local level. The team immediately jumped into researching who was wasting food, what they were wasting, how they were wasting it, and why. With prior research and new data we exposed the first two key players:

Who?
1. Average Households
2. Grocery Businesses

Once our research exposed the culprits (you and me;-), we wanted to talk to them…so we did. We interviewed ~10 local individuals and ~10 grocery stores. We found the what, how, and why:

What? 
Perishable and non-perishable food

How? 
Throwing out in dumpsters / trashcans

Why? 
1. Easy
2. Cheap
3. Unlawful to do otherwise
4. Accessible
5. No incentive otherwise
6. Lack of exposure

The user interviews provided some very important data on what, how, and why, but more importantly exposed a whole new beast. By asking why we learned the pain points, consequently identifying our third and fourth key players:

3. Food Banks
4. Shelters

Now that we had identified new players, we wanted to check-in with them. We wanted to learn a bit about their relationship with one another, but also their relationship with households and grocery stores. We spent the day hitting the phones calling several food banks and shelters. To briefly summarize our interviews:

“We would love individual donations throughout the year, not only on holidays” — Chris Wong, Food Donor Coordinator of Food Finders Inc.

“They ( the shelter) came in and asked us why we haven’t donated to them lately. I called them 4–5 times in the last month. We have two barrels of food in the back. The communication is awful.” — Manager, Co-Opportunity

“The communication from food banks is always bad …really bad” — Dharma Kitchen, Venice, CA

Key Players, Key Takeaways, & Key Frustrations

Once we collected the data, we analyzed. Through a comparative analysis we identified the donors’ and the recipients’ frustrations and needs:

• Donor 1: Individual Households: find food banks and food shelters extremely unorganized; they don’t know they can donate or communicating with local banks or shelters is unbearable so they dump; they aren’t aware of the damage it is doing
• Donor 2: Grocery Businesses: find food banks and shelters extremely unorganized; food banks and shelters have no process of communication; it’s cheaper to throw away
• Recipient 1: Food Banks: they have terrible organization; they find shelters have no processes or organization; they find grocery businesses lack in communicating; weak technology; lack inventory of specialized needed items
• Recipient 2: Kitchens/Shelters: have little to no organization; state that food banks have terrible communication and are very unorganized; weak technology; and lack specialized needed items

Tying It All Together: The Relationship of Cause and Effect

Our initial plan was to put a dent in food waste, however as we dug deeper we discovered a few correlations. Let’s do some reverse engineering. How can we create a more sustainable future? By reducing methane build up in landfills. How can we feed the needy in a more efficient way? By getting them healthy and plentiful food. So how can we reduce methane build up in landfills while getting healthy and plentiful food to those in need? By reducing food waste through smart and efficient food redistribution. Cause and effect.

Conceptualizing Our Cause

Now that we had our key players and understood what their frustrations and needs were it was time to conceptualize. We started with the question: what would help improve communication and organization between all of our parties? We concept mapped. Our solution was to create an interactive mobile app and responsive website.

Whiteboard Challenge

Jereme and I hit the whiteboard. We designed an interactive user journey. Collectively, we drew up six scenarios giving us a birds-eye view of what it would be like to donate or receive as one of the identities. Ultimately, it gave our team vision,focus, and direction for design.

The Focus

• Donor 1: When a household has an item(s) to donate they will be able to drop a pin and list what the item is, the condition, and the quantity/lbs
• Donor 2: When a grocery business has an item(s) to donate they will be able to drop a pin and list what the item is, the condition, and the quantity/lbs
• Recipient 1: Foodbanks are able to view what items are listed as available from donors and request those items (lacking in their inventory or just want)
• Recipient 2: Shelters are able to view what items are listed as available from donors and request those items and view what items are in stock at partnered Foodbanks

Designing Our Cause

We wanted to immediately test the idea. We sketched out a few landing pages, ran a few tests, iterated, then sketched up a quick hi-fi in Sketch. We submitted it live to usertesting.com

The Test:

• Concept: do users understand our concept? Does it resonate with them? Would they interact?
• Mission Statement: Do they know what they are looking at? Is it a cause they recognize?
• How It Works: Is it clear?

*Becoming a Food Stork — a volunteer driver, similar to reverse Uber Eats — is the idea to engage individuals to volunteer to pick up / drop off donations to the appropriate recipient*

Feedback:

• Users understood. They loved the idea and would get involved

Designing Mobile

Research indicated that users’ first touch points would be mobile. With that said the team went to paper and pen.

Once we came up with a design that worked with our user flow and IA, we popped them into Sketch to get some functionality and testing going.

Digital Takeaways- Establishing UI & Visual Foundation

Test, test, test. Once we popped our first wireframe into Invision, we learned a lot through usability testing — specifically, we were able to spot immediate trends in what needed to be iterated on including language, IA expectations, placement and UI, and what our users were expecting visually. We went through several rounds of testing until we concluded a design that was easy and natural to our users

Product Takeaways

Next Steps