Food pantries are essential for food donations, but they struggle to meet today's high demand.

• Time lag between donation and acquisition prevents timely access to food.
• Food pantries require significant space and manpower to store and distribute.
• Many low-income individuals, especially those with disabilities, struggle to reach food pantries.
• Lack of communication between volunteers, donors, and recipients reduces distribution efficiency.

Enhancing Food Access and Reducing Waste Through Community Collaboration

Online platform for information collection and dissemination

FoodDo is a two-sided platform that connects food donors, business owners, and volunteers to address local food shortages. The app enables efficient task coordination, allowing owners to accept donation requests and post delivery details, while volunteers can accept tasks, supported by real-time navigation and communication tools.

Interviews revealed potential user needs, we further documented and drafted into personas to guide design decisions.

• Lack of efficient information sharing platform.
• Lack of real-time sharing and visibility on food collecting process.
• Lack of organized schedule portal and task reminder.

During the FoodDo app development process, we analyzed the market and competitors and conducted user interviews to gain insights. This led to brainstorming multiple solutions to address the current challenges. After evaluating their feasibility, we identified the app's target audience and core features.

I started from the function and target user and try to understand potential scenarios and additional features that are important to this platform by creating storyboard.

Volunteer platform and buiness owner platform both start from registration screen. Due to the different function needs, volunteer platform shows calender, navigation function while the buisness owner platform shows task function.

I conducted 5 usability tests with different participants, they provided insightful feedback on design, feature and user flow perspectives. I further synthesized the feedback into 4 key takeaways.

• Using clear and consistent font hierarchy across all screens, unifying color usage for different UI elements like text, button, and etc.
• Using more graphic instead of word description to make the information more legible.
• Information logging feature should more aligned with real world user needs; task feature should give users the visiblity of different options; Calendar should show the tasks more intuitive and stress date and time; navigation feature could be more powerful, like a real map; need to think about communication problem within the platform.
• Between registration screen and task management screen need to add a home page for parent level management and navigation.

Registration & Verification

Two versions of registration path for different target users; verification system including phone number, real name, and related personal documentation are included in registration process.

Volunteer Task Confirmation

Task screen provides various task options for volunteers to choose the most suitable one. Home page calendar and task reminder help users in monitoring ongoing tasks.

Buisness Owner Task Confirmation & Posting

Task screen provides various task options for donors to choose based on their donation preference; Associated delivery information posting function allows users to customize delivery information.

Communication

Embedded chat box allows better cross-platform real-time communication between different users and prevents leakage of personal information.

Navigation

Embedded navigation system provides delivery-related information and completion check; it reduces the hassle of APP switching.

What could be done in the future?

Design Reflection