Locate, donate, or deliver food within your community
Food Finder is a mobile app and serves as a solution to help many communities combat food insecurity. Food Finder was developed using Mural to ideate our ideas as a team and Figma to prototype.
The Process
As a team, we collaborated for 4 weeks to create an emerging media solution to a problem. My group and I decided to create Food Finder, a mobile app that helps locate, donate, and deliver food within the community. We noticed there was a food insecurity problem in our college town, Athens, GA, which inspired us to create Food Finder. Over a course of one week, we used different sprint techniques on Mural that would help us create and improve our idea.
Our schedule included:
- Monday – Brainstorm, Ideation, Goals, Questions, HMW, & Note-n-Maps.
We tackled our app decision, goals, questions, and mapping out the general idea of Food Finder. Our goal was to foster healthy communities using our app, and we analyzed a series of ‘How Might We’ questions to ask experts or ourselves that covered topics such as access, privacy, and communication for the app. Individually, we mapped out our own versions of the user-experience using FoodFinder and then collectively worked together to determine which aspects we liked the most from each map that we could incorporate in the final prototype.
- Tuesday – Lightening Demo & Sketches
Individually, we each researched similar apps or any user interfaces that we liked to use as inspiration of creating the look for Food Finder. Then, we took the aspects that we liked the most and sketched out our own versions of the Food Finder app.
- Wednesday & Thursday – Art Museum, Speed Critique, Storyboard & Prototype
Then, we displayed our sketches and took a few minutes to vote on what parts we liked the most for each sketch. This allowed us to critique each other and collaborate on what the final product will look like and features it should include. We then created a storyboard that does a walk-through of the user’s experience.
- Friday – Test and Review
Finally, we created the prototype of Food Finder using Figma and tested our app by finding 5 participants who were willing to take the time to provide us feedback. Each participant was filmed so our team could watch their reactions and write notes on what we could improve for the future and any helpful insights.
The Challenge
Our original idea only included having select locations that worked with Food Finder to provide a drop-off / pick-up area for individuals. However, we had to think further about people who do not have the ability to get to those locations.
The Solution
Thus, we created food ‘Rescuers’. We pulled inspiration from similar apps like DoorDash and UberEats that would allow individuals to directly deliver food. In order to become a Rescuer, one must fill out an application, input information such as name, phone, address, license number, vehicle, and go through a background check. Rescuers for Food Finder would help further solve the issue of ‘access’ to those in need.
The Results
Creating Food Finder was an amazing opportunity to learn project management, ideating, team collaboration, and prototyping. For our presentation, we walked through the whole process, our goals, features, UX-testing findings, and the final demo.
The Food Finder features include:
- Connecting people and organizations who are interested in providing resources / food
- Providing location and process information on where and how those who need food can receive food
- Allowing for ‘Rescuers’ to deliver food to those who may not have the means to obtain food