Design Thinking for Food

Intro

This project was part of our final assignment for Design Thinking for Food course at UCDavis in spring 2020.

We worked in group of three with different expertise include MBA, food science and geography.

Year: 2020

My Role: UX Researcher and designer

Timeline: April-June 2020

Research Method: In-depth interviews

Research Type: Exploratory UXR

Problem Statement

More than 117,000 of students have experienced high levels of food insecurity throughout the UC System. The average four-year graduation rate for UC students who experienced food insecurity and homelessness was 11 PERCENTAGE POINTS LOWER compared to students who were food secure and housed. We found that:

Food insecurity is often unseen and may be more common than expected.
Students often are unaware of on and off campus resources.
Severity of food insecurity changes over time and with education/access to resources.

Research Goal

Transfer students need to catch up more quickly than other undergraduates because they have a shorter amount of time on the university. From a transfer student perspective, there are more opportunities for professional and personal development on a UC campus, and it seems like the university cares more about students in comparison. our main goal is to Empower transfer students with rapid, stress-free IDENTIFICATION and USAGE of foundational resources.

Research methodology and analysis

We used in depth interviews to explore the users' main pain points. We created an interview guide and a consent form for the interviewees. then we synthesized the interview materials in Miro, and developed our early concepts.

We analyzed the concepts and found the opportunity areas. we realized that that there is an opportunity to empower transfer students with rapid, stress-free identification and usage of foundational resources. We created a persona to raise empathy for the problem that the users are experiencing. and share it with the stakeholders.

Problem Statement

Research methods and anlysis

Research Golas

Design Solution

Design
We worked together to design our solution (using How might wes?) based on the concepts. We came to the idea to create a game based app which students can find the food resources on campus. I created story boards to portray our persona's journey while finding the app.

Prototype

Reflections

Prototype
we created a paper prototype to test users behaviors with our app.

Reflections
We learned that people needs time to explain about their pain points. We need to build trust between the interviewers and interviewees. We also found that game based app can be useful in informing things especially to young people. it is also important to include incentives to keep users engaged in using the product.