A food resources application for UT Students
Context
This was an academic project for the course - Information Architecture.
I led the team in the research phase. I also designed the mid and hi-fidelity prototypes for some screens.
The team consisted of 4 members and the project spanned 12 weeks.
What were we trying to solve?
A study conducted in 2021 by the Food Insecurity Action Team at the University of Texas, found that 1 out of 3 students experiences food insecurity. Several resources are available at UT to offer support to students in need. However, this information is scattered and difficult to find in time.
UT FoodPal
UT FoodPal is a mobile application aimed at providing timely and relevant information about food and other support resources for UT students who may be experiencing food insecurity.
Exploring the problem space.
Food insecurity is a complex, systemic problem. Before we set out to design a solution, we wanted to explore existing solutions. Our research was multi-phased.
Phase 1
In the first phase of our research, we conducted exploratory research to understand our problem space better. We wanted to narrow our focus to stay within the constraints of a time-bound semester-long project.
a. Secondary Research
We conducted in-depth secondary research to establish a clear understanding of food insecurity. We also reviewed existing literature to learn more about the prevalence and scope of the problem particularly on university campuses.
This is where we learned of UT Outpost - UT's campus food pantry and resource bank, which was established to address food insecurity on campus. This gave us some directions to explore further:
1.
Understand the current perceptions and awareness about UT Outpost
2.
Look into other avenues by which food insecurity was addressed on campuses around the United States.
We decided to answer these questions with three methods:
Preliminary user interviews
Stakeholder interview.
Competitor Analysis
b. Preliminary User Interviews:
We conducted 7 semi-structured interviews to understand the experience of university students with food insecurity and their awareness and utilization of resources at UT such as UT Outpost. Some key insights were:
5 / 7
participants had never used UT Outpost
3 / 7
participants experienced food insecurity sometimes.
Time & Awareness
were the primary barriers to accessing food resources at UT
c. Competitor Analysis
For this "competitor" analysis, we looked at how food insecurity was addressed on campuses across the United States. We also wanted to gather insights about resources other than UT Outpost that were specifically addressing food insecurity . We looked at some direct and indirect competitors to UT Outpost as shown below:
We also evaluated the information architecture of the websites of these resources. View the detailed competitor analysis here.
d. Stakeholder interviews
The purpose of this interview was to reach out directly to UT Outpost to understand the challenges they faced in operations and gather requirements, particularly concerning improving their website and overall reach.
We met Valeria Martin, the program coordinator at UT Outpost, and other members of the UT Communications team. This interview was instrumental in refining our research focus. We gathered the following key insights:
Where do we go from here?
Since building a web presence for UT Outpost seemed challenging, we broadened the focus of our research again to the following questions:
What are the challenges that UT Students face in accessing timely, nutritious and healthy meals?
What are the barriers faced by students in accessing the food resources available at UT?
These questions guided the second phase of our research.
Phase 2
With a clear research focus in place, we went back to the Food Insecurity Action Report to gather insights to address our research question. Further, to generalize our findings, we gathered data from a survey. This is what some of the participants had to say:
What were our key findings?
How might we?
Bringing it all together.
Before starting with the design phase, we worked on synthesizing our research. We created personas, listed out features and came up with the site map and content inventory for the application.
What are our users like?
We built two personas to distill out findings and picture our user.
Affinity Diagram
Based on the user requirements, we each listed out features that might be used to address the needs. We then grouped them together using affinity maps to help us with deciding the content goals for our website as well as its information architecture.
Site Map & Content Inventory
With some of the features in mind, we laid out the site map for the application, as shown below.
Simultaneously, we also developed a content inventory to clearly lay out the content to be included. This helped us filter through and strategize to ensure that we only added content that was helpful, relevant and informative.
Final Design
After creating some quick paper sketches, we moved on the creating our high-fidelity prototype as shown below:
The Home Screen lists food events, food pantries as well as healthy and affordable food near the user.
User has the option to filter based on broad categories such as location, cost and type.
User can switch between Map and Calendar view to have flexibility.
The Resources page lists all major food initiatives such as food pantries, regular food distribution drives, etc.
This page also offers guidance on storing and using fresh food produce.
Lastly, both university and government-provided support resources are listed here for ease of access.
To ensure that timely updates about food support resources as well as any student organizations hosted food events are collated and shared on this community page.
This community also facilitates sharing of extra food resources. (modeled on the "Buy Nothing Project")
Reflection
