Project Vision

Food Connect envisions a world where communities connect and share delicious home cooked food with ease. The app was designed as user-friendly mobile app to have a seamless experience, fostering a culture of sustainability and food sharing.

Challenges

Deciding and prioritising the features to be included for a good user experience while meeting the core needs of Food Connect.
Creating an user flow that simplifies the process of connecting people and sharing meals within the community.

Kick Off

For this project a goal oriented design approach was taken. A qualitative approach was adopted while conducting the competitive analysis to gain an understanding of the user needs and preferences.

Personas

Name: Shradda

Age: 31

Education: Masters in Computer Science

Hometown: Delhi

Family: Married

Occupation: Product Manager

Shradda is married and lives with her husband. She works as a Product Manager in Delhi. She is very outgoing and loves to host parties and have friends over. Cooking relieves her of work stress and she loves to try new recipes. Many times there is lot of food left and she wished to share it with someone who needs it.

Name: Sangeetha

Age: 18

Education: Bachelor of Commerce

Hometown: Bangalore

Family: Lives with parents

Occupation: Student

Sangeetha is a student at a University studying Bachelor of Commerce. She is actively involved in social causes. At the university she is in charge of the food committee and is disturbed by the amount of food wastage every day. Although she along with the committee members worked to bring down the amount of food wastage, there is still a lot of food left as the number of students eating at the canteen cannot always be accurately estimated. She seeks a tech-based solution to connect left over food with hungry students.

Competitive Analysis

Food Connect is an app created for social cause. Peer organisations were analysed to understand the issues they tackle. These organisations had tie up with restaurants to sell their products at discounted prices for products that remained unsold nearing closing ours or those nearing best before dates. The organisations that directly focused on excess food sharing except for one direct competitor did not have a mobile app but mentioned list of contacts the donors could reach out to when they wished to make any offerings. This was identified as not very convenient for donors. Food Connect bridges the gap that facilitates direct connection between the donors and recipients and potentially saving food from going waste.

Limited Mobile Presence: Peer organisations primarily lack mobile apps for food donations and collections
Contact Reliance: Donors need to connect with specific contacts listed on website making the process less user friendly.
Cumbersome process: Relying on contact list creates and extra step and can be a barrier to food donation

Wireframe

The goal of the wireframe was to create a simple that was intuitive interface that effectively connects donors and recipients. This is achieved by card layout for displaying food offerings and a heart icon as a favourite button to show acceptance of the offering. The wireframe also features detailed food view with a detailed location map with zoom functionality for easy pick up and option to chat between the donor and the recipient confirming pickup details.

Iteration

Users found the heart icon (favourite button unclear) and didn’t understand it was a confirmation of acceptance. This was changed to an Accept and Cancel button for clear understanding. The wireframe was also expanded to include a forum section as a feature to discuss on food related topics beyond the scope of the user testing. By focusing on clarity and ease of use, the app enables donors to share food easily and recipient to find and collect the offerings.

Takeaways

Developing Food Connect was a valuable lesson in user-centred design. Creating personas helped me to understand the needs and challenges and shaped features of Food Connect ensuring user friendly experience. Conducting competitive analysis helped to understand the market and the unique value proposition of Food Connect - a simple mobile app that help connects donors and recipients directly reducing food waste. User testing helped me to understand the confusing parts and create a more intuitive design. A new feature of forum was introduced to foster a community around food sharing and food related topics. Further user research can help to make the app even better and to create a broader social impact.