Boulder Food Rescue
The Brief
Boulder Food Rescue is a nonprofit organisation that seeks to aid in the fight against food waste. They operated via a decentralized system where volunteers retrieve various food products and help deliver them to food insecure communities. Upon the discovery of BFR, I was excited to see how I could help them since food waste is a cause that I care about.
The Challenge
I worked on a team with two other UX/UI designer with backgrounds in user research. Before meeting with the team at BFR, we started by doing some quick digging to learn more about how they operate. However, that proved more difficult than we would have thought because the nonprofit had one site where learn more about them but the site resulted in a 404. How could they recruit volunteers if user’s couldn’t access the site? From the get go, it seems like our services would be beneficial.
Goal
To create a better way for anyone who wishes to volunteer could easily apply and communicate with the nonprofit coordinators.
EMPATHIZE
Competitive Analysis
5 User Interviews
Affinity Map
Making volunteer work accessible to all.
Competitive Analysis
We began by evaluating various nonprofit organizations and app that operated in a similar realm to BFR. Local nonprofits such as Mission Food Hub or apps like To Good To Go offered acted as subjects in our competitive analysis composed of a plus/delta scheme, feature inventory, and SWOT analysis.
User Interviews
We proceeded by recruiting volunteers for rounds of user interviews. We utilized tools such as Slack and Zoom to gather our subjects, putting out a call to for anybody with volunteer experience. All 5 interviews took place on Zoom and Google Meet.
Over the course of interviews we uncovered more of the particular pain points that volunteers face when they are either trying to sign up for a volunteer shift or when they are on a shift. Key insights from the interview process were barriers in communicating with nonprofit representatives and difficulties in scheduling time to participate.
PARTICIPANT 1
This person felt very strong about supporting local communities that he considers himself a part of, however he emphasized problems in getting his grounding when arriving on the volunteer site with lapses in communication with staff. He also showed a preference for notification features in daily life.
01
“There it is a steep learning curve. Like but you you have it's kinda figured out fast really quickly of”
PARTICIPANT 2
In this person’s interview, he outlined various methods he uses schedule and communicate when we runs volunteer events, however address certain issues that have arisen in the past.
01
“I end up playing a little bit of a game of telephone”
PARTICIPANT 3
This participant indicated that she would like to volunteer more if didn’t need to work around her schedule. He also told us about how many nonprofit site are not updated as often as she would like.
01
“It’s hard to get information like where to show up or time and all that stuff”
Affinity Mapping
Once the user interviews had all been conduced, we moved on to affinity mapping in order to digest the information as well as display trends in a visual way. This process further enforced the insights we gained from our user interviews. The two issues volunteers faced were in difficulties with scheduling and communicating with staff.
Enhancing the Volunteer Processs
Once we had grown an understanding of the challenges that a volunteer would face in starting a new role, we were able to begin crafting improvements so that the volunteer process would be easy and accessible to everyone!
Sitemapping
We designed a comprehensive site map for consistent and readable information architecture. This process helped us narrow does the scope the app of a workable size. The services and divisions of BFR were many and vast so considering the average volunteer in their program, we decided to keep the app to its core essentials.
IDEATE
Attaining user feedback, remembering them through the design process.
User Persona
User Flows
User Persona and User Flows
In the creation of our User Persona, Annika, we were able to synthesize the data from our affinity map to create a model of the average user. Key aspects of her persona were that she relies heavily on her calendar as a means to tracking time and scheduling in addition to being a fervent volunteer with a passion for aiding local communities.
User flows also fleshed out her character more that so that we could map out possible progression she could take for the service. After talking it out with the team at Boulder Food Rescue, they mentioned their preference for an mobile app. We also believed that the design of a mobile app would be the best route to go with the user primarily scheduling and communicating using their phones.
User Interviews
We designed a comprehensive site map for consistent and readable information architecture. This process helped us narrow does the scope the app of a workable size. The services and divisions of BFR were many and vast so considering the average volunteer in their program, we decided to keep the app to its core essentials.
DESIGN
Creating an efficient scheduling and tracking app for volunteers.
Wireframes
Prototype
Wireframes and Prototyping
After we had synthesized, mapped, and planned the route we were going to take, it was time for action. We Proceeded to created low fidelity to high fidelity wireframes for a working prototype and had succeeded in improving the process of volunteer work.
View Figma File