An impactful mobile app that helps food insecure families by delivering weekly groceries from LA food banks, accompanied by recipes and games based on those groceries.
My Team
My Role
User Research & Interview, UX Design, Concept Design, User Testing, & Prototyping
Vision Video | Editing: Yena Kim | Illustrations: Audra Walker
Problem
The Los Angeles Food Bank estimates that 1 in 4 people in Los Angeles County experience food insecurity.
The pandemic has dramatically increased food insecurity and strained an extremely stressed supply. Loss of employment and income continue to increase demand for charitable food delivery and meal offerings.
There are resources for people experiencing food insecurity, but there are not enough. Many people do not know what is available for them, and if they do it can be confusing to apply and know if they qualify.
Insight
During our research we discovered that single mothers need our help. The poverty rate for single mother families in 2019 was 31% compared to 5% for married couple families, and almost one third (28.7%) of single mother families were food insecure. Through our interviews with single mothers we found that getting their children to eat healthy foods was one of the biggest obstacles, along with lack of cooking knowledge and time. One of our users found a way to get her son to at least try vegetables, by involving him in the cooking process. We knew we needed to find a way to save time and money for single mothers, provide knowledge on how to cook healthy foods, and all the while involving the children in an engaging way.
Solution
Fun with Food: A mobile app for low income families that delivers weekly pantry provided foods with recipes and games based on the groceries. The app lets users set food preferences and preferred delivery times. These features save busy parents time and money, creating more opportunities for quality family time. With options to sort recipes by difficulty, number of ingredients, and cooking time, parents can learn how to cook at their own level. While children learn to cook alongside their parents safely through the app's compatible cooking games.
Design Challenge
Let's encourage food insecure parents in Los Angeles to cook healthy meals for their families.
Process
The first step was learning more about the people: Who are the families that deal with food insecurity?
There is not one single face of food insecurity and families all over Los Angeles are struggling. Although, the research showed single mother led families are the most prevalent.
Out of the 28.7% of food insecure single mothers, only 11.7% use food pantries. Why are these parents in need not using resources available to them?
User Persona | Team effort
Meet Maria
She's a full time grocery store employee and single mother of two, Alyssa and Connor. Maria receives food stamps from CalFresh.
Even with working full time and receiving food stamps she still can not comfortably provide healthy meals for her family. She does not have time or transportation to go to food banks. Dinners consist of take out and frozen foods.
“I know the amount of take out food I feed my children can’t be good, but I can’t find the time or money to grocery shop for healthier foods.”
Meet Scarlett
She's a single mother of one, Elliot. Scarlett works two jobs, full time as a server and part time as a sales associate. She loves to cook but struggles getting Elliot to try new foods. Her breakthrough moment was when she asked Elliot to pick out a vegetable at the market that he liked. If he picks it out and is involved in the process, he has courage to try new foods.
“I definitely feel like I never have enough time with my kid, but I understand that it's my responsibility to be able to financially support myself and my son.”
User Interview | Interviewer: Audra Walker
User Interview | Interviewer: Audra Walker
Meet Lee
She's a single mother of two: Rylee and Hayes. Lee works as a florist in a family run business. With her first child, Rylee, she had a very difficult time getting her to try new healthy foods. Lee shared with us that she didn't feel confident with her cooking skills until more recently. Using meal kit services helped her learn how to cook new things she never thought she could. Now she feels confident enough to cook without them.
“Recipes are something that’s made cooking a lot easier. Hayes’ dad and I used to get Blue Apron meal kits, I learned a lot of skills.”
Discoveries
These discoveries led us to to an idea—an app based around all 3 of our users needs: saving time and money by delivering free groceries, offering recipes using those grocery items, and cooking games based off the recipes to involve children.
Prototyping
The hand-drawn, low fidelity wireframes contained all the features Lee and Scarlett expressed were important to them. The wireframes were then tested on classmates and interviewees.
Wireframes | Audra Walker
Prototype Video | Yena Kim
Testing Insights
1. Keeping the children entertained proved difficult.
Due to Covid-19, all of our user tests were done through Zoom. It was hard enough to keep a child's attention over Zoom, but asking for feedback on a game that was not fully developed and responsive was very difficult. We realized the game would need to be captivating for kids.
2. The purpose of the app wasn't clear.
Immediately after opening the prototype, users were asked a series of questions ranging from food preferences to family information without giving any context. Users had no idea what they were signing up for, and commented on not being able to skip the signup to see what the app was about.
3. Users were getting lost in the app.
We gave our users multiple scenarios, one being "Where would you go to find reviews on the taco recipe?" A few of our users were unsure where they were in the app. Once they found the reviews, they didn't know how to get back to where they started. The icons were also unclear, we used a spoon and fork to represent recipes but that didn't translate to everyone.
Our Results
UI Design | Team effort
On an extensive Zoom meeting, we designed Fun with Food, taking all of the user testing result into account. A major problem was the unclear purpose of the app, to solve this a tagline was added to the sign up screen. To help users know where they are in the app, corresponding icons are darker in the navigation bar based on which screen users click on.
Logo Design | Audra Walker
UX Writing | Masha Volodkina
UX Writing | Masha Volodkina
Game Design | Masha Volodkina
Making the game entertaining and interactive was a major aspect, it took resourcefulness to make a game through Figma, an application for prototyping, not game design.
Reflection
This project was incredibly eye opening to the widespread presence of food insecurity. So many people are struggling to feed themselves and their family that it has become an unfortunate norm in Los Angeles. With such a huge community of food insecure people, it was difficult to narrow down our scope. Settling on our main user held us back from getting more time to speak with them.
Looking back, I feel that this project would have certainly benefited from interviewing more single mothers dealing with food insecurity. Finding people who wanted to talk about their situation who also fit our target audience was challenging. The solutions were based on two users and one persona, and a great deal of research. To have a better understanding of what could help food insecure families, we needed to speak to more people.
I'm incredibly grateful for my team. With the constraints of Zoom, this project took willingness and adaptability. I'm also so thankful for the mothers who opened up about their experiences, without their insights this project could not have happened. I would like to continue working on this project with more users involved. Gathering more insights and testimonies from single mothers will help me better understand what I can do to make families feel more secure.