Nourish Food Distribution
Nourish is a hypothetical company created as a project in Google’s User Experience Certificate Program.
The company’s mission is to reduce food waste by connecting food donors with food seekers within the Los Angeles area. This allows users to schedule food distribution events, drop-offs, and pickups, while providing food seekers with a means for locating donated food.
The Problem
Many households in the Los Angeles area regularly dispose of unwanted food that can still be safely consumed, while a large portion of the Los Angeles population faces a lack of food due to financial strain. Food is regularly wasted due to a lack of convenient options for donating unwanted product.
The Research
The first step of the research process was to conduct interviews to identify a major contributor to food waste in the Los Angeles area. User interviews were chosen as a research method. This method was chosen because of the specific nature of the information that needed to be collected. Understanding food waste is a complex topic, and simple survey questions might not provide the required feedback to understand the issue. Interviews provided opportunity for follow-up questions, resulting in more relevant feedback.
Research revealed that difficulty in finding practical donation outlets as well as donation pickup sites was present. Taking these pain points into account, user personas were developed to represent potential users of the app and responsive website. Additionally, a competitive audit was conducted to identify current gaps in the market.
The Goal
The goal of this project is to develop a mobile app and responsive website that efficiently connects food donors and seekers, therefore reducing unwanted food waste.
Crazy Eights
Based on current user pain points and gaps in the market identified via the competitive audit, the ideation process began with a Crazy Eights exercise.
Selection of paper wireframes
Low-fidelity Prototype
A low-fidelity prototype was then produced in preparation for the user testing phase.
Ideation
Paper Wireframes
Next, paper wireframes were created to determine initial designs for the main user flow.
User Testing
Usability Study
A usability study was conducted where participants were presented with the low-fidelity prototype as well as a set of tasks and a system usability scale.
Parameters
Location: Los Angeles, CA
Participant Age Range: 32-65
Length: ~15 minutes
Type: In person, moderated
Refining the Design
Based on the usability study results, the following changes were implemented:
Location Selection Screen
A carousel style selection process was implemented to help streamline the process of choosing a donation type for users.
Step labels were added to the progress bar to better inform users where they were in the scheduling process.
Dropdown menus were replaced with CTA buttons and pop-up menus to make event details selection more intuitive.
Selected Designs
Event Review Screen
Date Selection Screen
Responsive Design
Subsequently, a responsive website was developed for varying screen sizes.
Next Steps
The Nourish Food Distribution Company, mobile app, and responsive website is a hypothetical company and product engineered for the purposes of UX design development through Google’s UX Design Professional Certificate Program. Thus, the product did not launch.
If the product company and product were legitimately launched, next steps would include additional research in the form of surveys, interviews, and usability studies. Information from these sources would be analyzed and utilized to inform design change decisions in future iterations of the app and website. Additional contact would continuously be made with members of the product team in order to ensure proper marketing and maintenance of the product.
Takeaways
This project helped refine both my technical skills as well as improve my understanding of the design process as a whole.
Technical Skills
Expanded knowledge of tools within Figma such as working with components and instances to streamline workflow.
Gained experience working with Figma Community tools such as UI kits, templates, and plugins.
Design Process Learnings
Gained additional experience with reiterating on designs based on feedback from usability testing.
Learned to utilize best practices when creating responsive websites for use of product on various screen sizes.
Gained firsthand experience in progressive enhancement designing.