FOOD BANK
SONAM HUANG
PROBLEM:
The question my app FOOD BANK seeks to answer is -- how might we make fresh produce more accessible and affordable to college students? As college students, it is extremely difficult to make time to grocery shop both efficiently and affordably. If we wanted to factor in healthy choices into our grocery lists and diet plans, it instantly becomes 10x harder. Not only do we lack resources like transportation, finances, time and more, the number one thing that stands in our way to obtain accessible and affordable fresh produce is the knowledge of where to get our hands on them.
PRELIMINARY USER RESEARCH:
Here are the key insights determined to be the biggest challenges for college students in successfully obtaining accessible and affordable fresh produce --
1. Knowing where fresh and affordable produce is being sold
2. Knowing the best deals for specific items they required
3. Being close enough in proximity to easily get to said location
3. Having reliable sources for sales and giveaways to
ensure no time wasted and no trip wasted
USER PERSONAS:
• Asian, and typically only likes to cook traditional Asian cuisines so always need specific Asian ingredients
• Does not have a car and relies on the bus to get around for grocery shopping
• Full time student struggling to balance an unpaid internship
• Has a budget of only $50 a week for groceries or food
• Has a myriad of health issues and needs to eat as healthy as possible
Persona 2 --
• Caucasian, likes to try all kinds of cuisines and cook them for their housemates
• Extreme gym maniac
• Has a shared car with 4 other housemates
• Can only go grocery shopping once a week when they have the car
• Full time student with a part-time job
• Tends to overspend on groceries as they are tasked to shop for the entire household
• Wants to find the healthiest options for each meal
IDEATION:
While trying to brainstorm the best possible solution to this problem, a couple ideas I had included a carpool/rideshare app that perhaps can allow students to take other students to go grocery shopping together, a collective of different grocery stores may be merged into a giant store, gardens around Berkeley where students can contribute to planting produce, and a farmer’s market on Sproul once a week. However, all of these ideas had one thing in common -- they could only address one or two of the biggest challenges college students face in successfully obtaining affordable and accessible fresh produce, but not all. The final idea I landed upon was a cross-college student app that students can post in and help other students around the area find the cheapest options for specific fresh produce they are looking for or in search of. This solves the problem of allowing students to know where they can find fresh and affordable produce and even time-sensitive sales and giveaways because it's all posted by students either from their very own college or other nearby colleges. This also means that the posts are much more reliable as it's shared from other struggling college students, and because they are close in proximity, transportation is much less likely to be an obstacle.
LOW-FI PROTOTYPE:
MID-FI PROTOTYPE:
INSIGHTS FROM USABILITY TESTING:
• If you are ordering based on friends or distance, would it be possible to also highlight time-sensitive things and have those ordered at the top regardless of friends or distance?
• Would probably want to see it first if its a sale rather than only see after you scroll
• Good implementation with the hashtags/grouping of categories to make searching for specific items easier
• Adding a reply function to these status updates or posts would be extremely beneficial and actually allow further conversation or discussion between students
• What about if people post about unrelated things? What would be the result or would there be some type of filter to prevent these situations?
• If this were to be developed more in the future, could possibly partner with local stores that students may actually live much closer to rather than big brand name grocery stores yet just do not know they exist
• Overall sounds like a really cool idea/app that could potentially make access to affordable groceries so much easier and more affordable to college students everywhere
• Would probably want to see it first if its a sale rather than only see after you scroll
• Good implementation with the hashtags/grouping of categories to make searching for specific items easier
• Adding a reply function to these status updates or posts would be extremely beneficial and actually allow further conversation or discussion between students
• What about if people post about unrelated things? What would be the result or would there be some type of filter to prevent these situations?
• If this were to be developed more in the future, could possibly partner with local stores that students may actually live much closer to rather than big brand name grocery stores yet just do not know they exist
• Overall sounds like a really cool idea/app that could potentially make access to affordable groceries so much easier and more affordable to college students everywhere
HI-FI PROTOTYPE:
