Timeline
3 months
Team
Texas Convergent
Tools
Figma
Role
User Research, Visual Design, Interaction Design
CONTEXT
Providing food for all
The mobile app aims to transition Meals on Wheels from a decade long paper-based volunteer coordination system. Serving as a volunteer hub, volunteers can pick up orders and groceries, preview and track delivery routes, and provide information about client wellness.
01. Feature Overview
How did we digitize a manual, on-paper experience to an intuitive, efficient volunteer experience?
01. Check meal pickup list and clients
Volunteers can easily check how many meals and of which type they need to pickup from the Meals on Wheels Austin distribution center. Once clicked into the route sheet, they can get an overview of their day's client addresses, number of clients, and re-access the total meal list.
02. Route to clients in app.
Volunteers can view their route sheet and click into client addresses to navigate using an integrated Google Maps API. Each client's address and meal delivery is listed, as well as any drop off notes. If the need arises, volunteers can call Meals on Wheels at the click of a button.
03. Fill out client wellness check surveys and record delivery status.
Post-delivery, volunteers fill out a wellness check survey to record to whom the delivery was handed off to and the status of the client. If they were unable to deliver or the client requires follow up, they can indicate it alongside any additional notes in this form.
02. Problem Framing
How did we get here?
PROBLEM CONTEXT
Completely manual
Meal on Wheels volunteers and administrators were previously using an entirely manual, paper system to manage and track different delivery routes and volunteers. This has resulted in confusion, inability to adapt or make last-minute changes and lack of efficiency.
PROBLEM CONTEXT
Limiting factors
A few limiting factors played into the design decisions made when conceptualizing this application.
01. Time and engineering ability
As this was a semester-long project and with little to no funding, occasional tradeoffs had to be made to ensure completion of the deliverables by the end of the semester.
02. Safety and info privacy
Meals on Wheels wanted us to keep everything in-app and to maintain client information privacy as much as possible. This meant limiting what information was shown, navigability of the overall flow and making design trade-offs to prioritize privacy to their standard.
03. Inability to do user testing
Meals on Wheels wanted volunteer and client information to remain private so we could not do any real-world testing of our app. Many of our user pain points were provided and not developed through user research.
THE GOAL
Design a mobile application to streamline the volunteer-facing delivery and fulfillment experience.
03. Ideation
How can we devise a solution satisfying these requirements?
User Flow & LO-FI
Translating physical to digital
We spoke extensively with our client to understand their current paper system, even touring their volunteer hub and meal preparation facility. They wanted to keep the app interactions as similar to their existing system as possible so we aimed to keep language, content and the overall flow as 1 to 1 as possible.
Key Takeaways
Defining scope
As this was my first client project, I learned the planning and understanding pre-work was just as important as the actual UI designing.
Collaboration
This was my first time working end-to-end on a project with engineering and product so I learned a lot from brainstorming and discussing with them!
What I'd change
If I had more time and resources, I'd user test this application with a volunteer by accompanying them during their delivery and iterating further.
