Jackfruit; LARFB | UX/UI Case Study

project. JACKFRUIT

date. 2019

city. Los Angeles

client. Los Angeles Regional Food Bank

Brief:

My team and I assisted the Los Angeles Regional Food Bank in designing a digital platform that helps forward their current objectives; educating people from all walks of life about nutrition, food waste, food security, and sustainability, while utilizing technology to promote individuals to take action.
*Food Insecurity- the state of being without reliable access to a sufficient quantity of affordable, nutritious food.

Client Bio:

Since 1973, the Los Angeles Regional Food Bank has distributed more than 1 billion pounds of food. The Food Bank collects food from hundreds of resources. With the help of 37,000 volunteers annually and an agency network of more than 600 partner agencies, they serve more than 300,000 people on a monthly basis to fight hunger.

Roles:

UX/UI Team:

Tools:

Jackie Ansell

Lizzie Greenberger

Whiteboard, Sharpie, Post-It, Copic, Otter, Sketch,

Invision, Photoshop, Google Suite, Trello, Slack

Mobile iOs

Platform:

UX/UI Design

Style Guide
Low-Mid Sketching

HiFi Prototyping

Define and Discover

01 Intro & Research

Challenges

In looking at the scope for our project with the Los Angeles Regional Food Bank, our team first delved into the missions expressed by our client, as well as assessed the brazen challenges and overall issue.

As preliminary studies, we decided to break up sections of the LARFB’s current website to familiarize ourselves on the current programs and be able to efficiently analyze the goals and mission for the preceding research.

—But, it turned out we needed more in depth knowledge, so we interviewed Courtney Morra, a lead representative on the board of the organization that same day.

We are trying to reach everyone who faces food insecurity. Hunger has many faces, and there is no one single group of people that is representative of the group.

“

- Courtney Morra, Manager of Marketing & Communications, LARFB

With Los Angeles contributing to one million tons of waste heading to landfills per year, as well as being home to the largest number of food insecure people in the country at an estimated 1.4 million individuals facing hunger daily- the LARFB vocalized that it is their priority to mobilize resources to fight hunger in [our] community.

Following interview discussions with our client and grasping a better understanding of the problem at large, we honed in on some definitive points needed to keep in mind regarding our client's mission, as well as the project goals moving forward.

Business Objectives

1. Increase donations to the LA Food Bank

2. Increase education of sustainability and nutrition

3. Improve public understanding of food banks and what they do

Goals

Create an engaging application that could help the LA regional food bank increase awareness, education, and donations to users.
Tackle the problem of sustainability by tying the project back to excess food waste and connecting the dots between food insecurity and food waste.

We conducted a competitive and comparative analysis of some other leading food-related non profit organizations, rescues, and food banks in the United States to gauge where our client is positioned in the field. Amongst these competitors, we noted that LARFB currently falls short in having already implemented features that could promote outreach and engagement with customers more immediately.

After evaluating the current landscape of the organization and its position across the market, we looked to the user to do some qualitative research about how individuals feel, as well as what they might already know on the matter.

We conducted a total of six user interviews to extract some insights and get a good understanding of our various users’ attitudes, motivations, and behaviors around food, as well as charity. Our questions needed to be specific but catered to the general population so that we could get a broad idea about different people’s habits with food, food waste, and their all-around knowledge about food banks and sustainability.

02 Analysis & Synthesis

Identify the User

Our interviews proved extremely fruitful and we were now more than ready to analyze all the key takeaways. We pulled out the most crucial user quotes from each individual interview and grouped them into insights on the board through three rounds of affinity mapping.

[Food waste] is something that I care about a lot and is a pain point in my life. I’ve been so stoked on the fact that someone would come pick up my old plant material for compost, it would evoke a reason for me to donate other food.

“

Clothing is easier to donate because they don’t expire.

“

After synthesizing all the information and organizing the insights into main categories, we were able to construct a user persona to assist us in painting the bigger picture and real world scenario as we continue on to ideate and design the structure of the application.

Key takeaways in creating our persona:

I try not to waste, but it’s hard- I try to make an effort
I care about food waste, but not willing to start doing something about it
I would leverage technology to stay on track with sustainability
I’ll only donate if its convenient
I donate my clothes more often because it’s an easier process

I feel guilty about wasting food
I don’t know what I can actually donate
I seek transparency and control in my donations
I am loosley influenced by expiration dates
I’m not conscious about shelf life at home
I don’t really know what food banks do

Scenario

René has recently been inspired by her company who has decided to support sustainable living by trying to tackle deep food insecurity issues within LA. They have been implementing fun new strategies to motivate their team and make it a mission to become a more environmentally conscious, humanitarian company. René is about to go on vacation for a long holiday weekend and realized that some of her groceries might go bad while she’s away.. She wants to avoid merely throwing out her excess items and feels ambitious to make a positive impact towards the issue of food insecurity and waste in the greater Los Angeles community.

Problem Statement

Conscious young professionals like René who feel concerned about their unsustainable habits want to limit their food waste but have difficulty finding an easy and inspiring way to do so.

How might we…

Help Rene limit her food waste in a convenient and engaging way that promotes sustainable habits?

Develop and Deliver

03 Ideation & Prototyping

It was time for design studio, as we began the ideation process for design and overall concept. Through sketches and whiteboarding, we developed an initial hypothesis and did some user testing.

P

I

V

O

T

We initially thought of incorporating a pantry organizer that allowed you to copy your grocery shopping receipt.

Immediately after our very first paper prototype, our findings raised an extremely valuable point that made us rethink our design and essentially caused us to COMPLETELY PIVOT ideas.

—The user made note that the prototype did not take into account when he would actually eat the food, but rather assumed that he would just be immediately donating foods he just purchased.

We also decided that we should stray from having too much manual input, an insight that we determined from our affinity map. So we returned to our insights, persona, and problem statement to determine a more innovative and resourceful approach.

In addition to our pivot, we came to even deeper insights. Not only do our users want a convenient way to donate, but they actually want a full experience that would truly inspire and motivate them as well.

These sentiments led us to expand on the idea of gamification and how might all those features look like. Our main goals in determining those features were to simplify the donation process by quickly assessing what our user wants to donate, creating a convenient way to schedule a pick up, and motivate our users through an engaging competition with their friends where once there goals are met they receive rewards.

For our final design, I took the lead in stylizing the established hi-fidelity prototype before altogether tackling iterations for specifics.

We landed on the following set of style guides for our site’s design, largely focusing on the color wave of the donation status bar feature as the leading element for the engaging pages.

Keeping the Los Angeles Regional Food Bank in mind, we opted for a color scheme that would live in the same realm of the brand, but with a twist to achieve a more fun, dynamic and attention grabbing experience.

To design a more expressive app intended for gamification, we wanted to build it out in a fashion that would continue to entice the user by incorporating icons of competition and flamboyant gradients to showcase a sprint or contest.

Final iterations brings us to our wireflow illustrated below which shows the core features of the Jackfruit app. The top wireframe shows Rene's group, her co-workers. The Food Inspector is a chat function with a Food Bank expert to determine whether an item is donate-able, and the Bag shows the food pickup flow.

03 Ideation & Prototyping

Final Solutions

Jackfruit was named after the exotic fruit due to the ever growing discussion of its possibility to be an actual solution for solving world hunger. Despite its lack of protein (being a fruit), and thus, not a good substitute for meat, it still consists of a plethora of benefits that showcase its ability to be a very strong candidate.

Jackfruit was branded in a fashion that would highlight sustainability and the fight of food waste throughout. An app that completely set the stage for an enjoyable experience through enlightening education and a stimulating adventure to make impactful, positive contributions to the eco-friendly movement, as well as the life of the user.