PROJECT DETAILS
Roles
UX/UI Designer
Research
Prototyping
Tools
Adobe XD
Illustrator / Photoshop
Research methods frameworks
Microsoft's Inclusive Design toolkit
Collaborators
Ina Varghese
Ryan Kelly
Kyra Kornack,
Dion Hart
This is a challenge given by community collaborator, Food For Life from my virtual internship at Sheridan College. Food on the Run was created to help make it easier for people who takes the public transit when picking up their groceries from the food support programs.
THE PROBLEM
Many individual living with the challenges of poverty uses the transit to access the food support programs. With the continuing rise of COVID-19, the need for these food support programs is only increasing but there are many physical challenges preventing the traditional distribution of food to the people in need. There is no regular support channel for people who uses public transit to pick up their food.
CHALLENGE
How can we integrate food distribution into Halton’s public transit system to better serve those who primarily take the bus?
"Re-imagining how Food for Life delivers healthy food to approximately 24,000 people per week during the pandemic in ways that are most safe, convenient and accessible for all — including potentially meeting them at transit locations and primary access points."
THE SOLUTION
Food on the Run, a combination of 2 ideas into one comprehensive solution to provide greater coverage of the transit system. Food on the Run intends to bring the food to where patrons already are, while also giving them the freedom to choose what that experience looks like.
THE USERS
People on food support programs who rely on public transit to retrieve it. Single parents, low-income families, older adults.
A persona spectrum was created to help widen the target audiences and ensure that every possible limitations were assessed, while a persona network helped in recognizing the different user's daily life, and allow the team to develop the solution with the user's personal ecosystem in mind.
THE PROCESS
A 10-week challenge filled with creativity, design thinking, interdisciplinary team meetings, bi-weekly community collaborator meetings, facilitated workshops, and weekly self-direct modules, all done virtually.
RESEARCH
Research was an ongoing process throughout this project. It is valuable to understand the overall challenge before diving into the ideation, but also significant to strengthen the solution with evidential research to help prove its credibility.
Click here to read about the Solution Analysis Report (Scale, Impact & Location) 📄
BRAINSTORMING
Using Google Jamboard, ideas were generated despite some being crazy. After finalizing the solution, the team came together to discuss key features of each experience. This brainstorming helped translate the research into the finalized solution as the strengths of existing solutions were noted that could then be incorporated into the team's final product. The solution brainstorm aided the creation of the prototype.
USER JOURNEYS
In order to create authentic user journeys, interaction dairies of varying users focusing on their daily life + food pick up were conducted. This allowed for a better understanding of the user as all points of interactions of their user experience was clearly identified. Diving deeper into the user journeys, micro-interactions were designed to make the solution more inclusive by pinpointing even the tiniest details.
FINAL SOLUTION - Proposal Brief (SELL SHEET)
A sellsheet was created to help bring together the findings, summarize the pain points and communicate the features and benefits of the final solution in an easily accessible and visually supported way.
FINAL SOLUTION:
INDEPENDENT ASPECT - Interacting with the Vending Machine
A visual journey of the user's interaction with the vending machine experience, along with health and safety regulations inputted to help combat the spread of COVID-19.
Easy 5-step process: Input personal PIN # to gain access to the interface where users can comfortably select their desired food box sizes which easily dispenses out from the machine.
FINAL SOLUTION:
SOCIAL ASPECT - Interacting with the Mobile Grocery Store
A visual journey of the user's interaction with the mobile grocery store experience, along with health and safety regulations inputted to help combat the spread of COVID-19.
Easy 5-step process: Waiting in line, interacting with others from a safe distance, making a mental grocery list, operating in a circuit-style shopping (moving from station to station),collecting own bags of groceries home.
REVISIONS
A situation adaptation was conducted on the final prototype to help the team look at the solution through the lens of others and see patterns in the kinds of issues people may face. The team came up with three different situational cases when using the prototype in order to help tackle more area.
Reflection
I learned that despite being in different programs that may not necessarily be the creative fields, everyone has their own creative outlook which they have all brought to this experience. While we may have come up with similar ideas, we definitely had different views on them which I believed helped us to expand our ideation and better enhance our solution. With that said, I learned that great ideas do not need to come from those with the most experiences but rather from a collaboration of different mindsets. This was a long journey filled with continuous learning, endless researching, and constant refinements of the chosen solution to better solve the problem at hand. This was a new experience to be able to collaborate with students from outside my program as we all had different skills that helped progress the project ahead. I had the opportunity to share my knowledge with the team and likewise.
Next Steps
- Conduct user testings on the solution and gather real users from the program.
- Further refine the solution to make it even more cost-friendly.
- Research current problems to narrow down the focus on one of the two aspects.
