UX Research + Design
UT FoodPal
A digital solution trying to help tackle food insecurity at UT Austin
Client
Course Project
Information Architecture and Design | INF 385E
My Role
UX Researcher
Interaction Designer
Duration
4 months
Aug'22 - Dec'22
Team Size
4
Introduction
1 out of 3 UT students is food insecure
Food insecurity is defined as:
“as a lack of consistent access to enough nutritious food for an active, healthy lifestyle.”
The problem of food security is slightly more complex for the student population. With a busy class schedule and limited earnings, students may struggle to consistently afford and consume healthy, nutritious food. There are several resources available to offer support to students dealing with food insecurity. However, several reasons may prevent them from fully utilizing these resources.
Barriers to accessing food resources
1
Time
2
Dietary options
3
Awareness
4
Healthy options
6
Distance
5
Stigma
Awareness of existing food resources
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Information is often scattered and unaccessible
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Food resources may operate at restricted operation hours
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Meal plans still expensive
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Busy class schedule
Reduce stigma related to availing resources
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Hesitant to appear in need
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Scarcity mindset
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Unaware of their eligibility
Efficient meal-prep with local produce
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Unfamiliar with local produce
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Unfamiliar with ways to use and store local produce
Access resources given time and monetary constraints
The UX Process
STEP 1: RESEARCH PHASE
Research Phase 1:
Secondary Research
Preliminary user interviews
Competitive analysis
Stakeholder interviews
Research Phase 2:
Secondary research
Survey
Research Synthesis
STEP 2: IDEATION
Ideation
Content Inventory
STEP 3: PROTOTYPE AND TEST
Low-fidelity wireframes & heuristic evaluations
Mid-fidelity wireframes & concept testing
Hi-fidelity wireframes
01 Research
Our research phase was divided into two phases.
PHASE 1
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Conducted exploratory research to identify problem space
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Secondary research consisted of literature review, and exploration of standard definition of food insecurity
Questions for initial research
How do we improve awareness and promote UT Outpost?
How do we improve the user experience of UT Outpost as a service?
How do we promote awareness about all food resources provided by UT in addition to UT Outpost?
Preliminary User Interviews
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Interviews with 7 UT students to understand their experiences with food insecurity
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Questions from USDA Food Insecurity module and general questions about food and grocery habits
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Additional questions on awareness and use of UT outpost
1
Out of 7 participants was mildly food insecure
5
Out of 7 participants never used UT Outpost
Time & Awareness
Were primary barriers to accessing resources at UT Outpost
Competitive Analysis
We then conducted Competitive Analysis to understand other initiatives and organizations working to address this problem space.
Some of our key competitors were the following:
Stakeholder interview
We met Valeria Martin, the program coordinator at UT Outpost, along with members of the UT Communications team.
Key insights from this interview are below:
Part of Student Emergency Services
No separate website
Funded by University grants, donations
Operation challenges - Inconsistent donations, stigma
The stakeholder interview was instrumental in shifting our research focus due to the following reasons:
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We understood the constraints under which UT Outpost operated
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UT Outpost will not be able to have its own website due to University regulations and branding constraints
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We needed to reassess our problem areas of reimaging the UT Outpost website and overall user experience
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Additionally, other concerns such as inventory management constraints, irregular donations, etc made us realize that in order to begin to address the problem of food insecurity, we may need to look beyond this one initiative
Therefore, we decided to proceed with the third problem area:
How do we promote awareness about all food resources available to UT students?
PHASE 2
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Understanding how to promote awareness about food resources
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Design solutions to address the pain points that students faced in terms of food insecurity
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Identifying specific challenges students faced in accessing support provided by UT
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We created a survey to learn about food resources-related awareness and behaviours
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Received a total of 16 survey responses from students all accross UT
50%
Out of 7 participants was mildly food insecure
Social Media & Word of Mouth
Out of 7 participants never used UT Outpost
57%
Were primary barriers to accessing resources at UT Outpost
Part of Student Emergency Services
No separate website
Funded by University grants, donations
Research Synthesis
With the research conducted so far, we decided to synthesize and uncover recurring themes throughout our research with affinity diagramming. For both our research focus areas, we arranged our research findings into the broad themes as shown below:
What are the challenges that UT students face in accessing timely, nutrituous and healthy meals?
Lack of time to prepare meals
Lack of time to visit grocery stores
Lack of access to groceries due to distance
Lack of access to affordable, healthy meals around UT
Lack of awareness about available resources
What are the barriers faced by UT Students in accessing food resources available at UT?
Lack of awareness
Scattered information
Time constraints to avail resources
Not eligible for some resources
Limited dietary options
Stigma and hesitation
Personas
With the research insights gathered, we created two personas as shown below:
Empathy Map
We also created an empathy map to synthesize our user’s pain points, frustrations and needs from all the research that we conducted so far.
How might We statements
In order to effectively guide our ideation phase, it was necessary to distil our insights into concrete actionable questions.
The following How Might We Statements are a result of our synthesis:
How Might We enable students to access resources keeping time, distance and monetary considerations in mind?
How Might We increase the exposure of food resources to students?
How Might We design a welcoming platform so that students feel comfortable using these resources?
How Might We ensure timely updates of inventory for students to effectively make use of these resources?
How Might We enable students to prepare healthier meals with the locally available produce?
Ideation
We began by listing out the features we each imagined being present in the platform that we designed. We broadly grouped them using affinity diagrams as shown below:
Next, in order to visualize and share our ideas, we created a set of sketches as shown below:
With all of the features in mind, we proceeded to make a Content Inventory of our proposed platform.
The Content Inventory can be accessed using this link.
03 Prototype
LOW-FIDELITY PROTOTYPES
This led us to our first set of low-fidelity prototypes. Shown below are some screenshots of our low-fidelity prototypes.
MEDIUM-FIDELITY PROTOTYPES
After conducting a thorough Cognitive Walkthrough of our screens, we developed our mid-fidelity prototypes as shown below:
CARD SORTING
While most of the desired content as well as the information architecture was in place, we needed to further refine the filter terms as well as the terminology used such as events, resources and initiatives. In order to do that, we determined card-sorting to be the best method. We performed card-sorting with 16 participants and the results helped us finalized our filters and other terminology.
HIGH-FIDELITY PROTOTYPES
We then moved on to creating our high-fidelity prototype. The first iteration included the following web-based screens.
CARD SORTING
In order to validate our high-fidelity prototypes, we conducted usability testing with a single participant. This test gave us the following insights:
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The user needed more personalization which gave rise to the need for creating a profile and saving events, adding events to calendar etc.
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The user also felt that using a mobile application would be easier for navigating on the go
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Additionally the user’s feedback helped us in reassessing the hierarchy of our application’s features.
Based on this usability testing, we decided to switch to a mobile application. Our final screens will reflect this decision.
SITE MAP
With the site map in place, we decided to transfer the hierarchy to our mobile application.
Final Designs
SPLASH SCREEN AND ONBOARDING
The first screen that the user comes across while using the app is the splash screen, followed by the login and sign up screens which are included in order to increase the degree of personalization for the user.
HOME SCREEN
The main categories present in the bottom navigation of our app include Home, Resources, Community and Profile. The home screen contains a list of events, food pantries and other food resources present in and around UT. It also allows the user to customize the location by setting a radius. The search and filter feature allows the user to personalize their feed based on food categories, location, cost and type of food resource.
MAP AND CALENDAR VIEW
The map and calendar view screens allow the user to easily access the different food resources present in and around UT. The map visualizes the different events and initiatives through which the user can quickly find information on resources that are relevant to them. The calendar provides information for the user to plan their schedule efficiently based on real time information.
RESOURCES
The Resources page presents information on 3 main categories like Food initiatives which presents a curated list of all the initiatives present in and around UT, the Know your Food category enables the user access to specific information on food items along with recipes, and finally the support resources includes information on emergency funds, SNAP benefits etc that are important for students facing food insecurity.
COMMUNITY
The community dashboard screen contains posts created by organisers and community members, which allows students to engage with each other to efficiently convey information on resources in and around UT. It also provides real time information which allows students with time constraints to quickly access information on events happening near them. The dashboard also contains a social media plugin to provide up to date information present in different communication medias.
PROFILE
The profile page allows the user to access their account, items that they have saved from the resources page or community dashboard, access to FAQs from other students etc.
Rationale behind IA Descions
As the main purpose of the application is to present information to users in a seamless way, majority of our information architecture decisions were focused around organisation and search categories of the system.
APP HEIRARCHY
Our application has categorized different features based on the 4 main sections. This decision was made to maintain clarity in the different offerings of the app. This also formed the global navigation system of our application
SEARCH AND FILTERING
The categorization of food resources formed the basis of our search and filtering system.
Three ways of categorization took place -
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Type of resources distributed/given
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Affiliations of these resources
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The way these resources are being accessed by students
1. Based on type of food resources being offered
We decided to provide filters based on the type of food resources being offered for users to get the opportunity to choose the kind of food resources they would like to avail.
Categories like canned food, fresh produce, diary products, non-dairy products, meat products, prepared meals, snacks, etc
2. Based on affiliations of these resources
All resources are categorized into two types - UT-affiliated and non-UT-affiliated. This decision was taken based on user feedback from card sorting. Almost all users categorized UT-affiliated organisations separately from non-UT organisations.
3. The way that these resources function
From our card sorting activity, we discovered that users categorized recurring events or proper established organisations together and one time events separately.
ORGANISATION OF RESOURCES
Based on our navigation system, users can access information on food resources in two ways -
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they can learn about different events taking place near them that are currently or in the near future distributing different types of food resources
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users can learn more about different initiatives that deal with food insecurity
As home is the landing page, we prioritized currently happening events. These could be one-time events or recurring events that are carried out by different organisations.
Any user can easily look at all the events happening near them, get directions to them, add them to their calendar, and RSVP to them if required.
Next, the users should be able to get information on different initiatives that are in place that are trying to overcome food insecurity or at the very least distribute or sell food products at a subsidised rate.
Most of these conduct recurring events or provide students wIth a grocery store-like system to access food resources.
DISPLAY OF RESOURCES
Resources are listed in 3 ways on the homepage
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list view
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map view
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calendar view
These different views have been integrated to allow users to see all resources in a go, view resources on maps to get a sense of their location, and add upcoming events to their calendars.
Conclusion and Reflections
Challenges:
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Complex problem space
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Changes need to be more systemic - a lot of surveyed students mentioned subsidization of UHD meals, reusing meal plans, etc
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Restrictions identified through insights gained from the stakeholder interview played a major role in changing the course of the project
Reflections and Future scope:
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Changing platforms from website to mobile applications to incorporate user needs was challenging yet rewarding
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In-depth usability testing could be done to further improve the design of our applications high fidelity screens
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Time to test with more participants to detect any usability issues that are present