BLUEPRINT PROJECT

Facilitating meal donations for 15,000+ kids

CONTEXT

What is Feeding Canadian Kids?

Feeding Canadian Kids (FCK) is the largest federally registered charity in Canada that has partnered with 200+ restaurants to feed 15,000+ kids in schools. However, everyday, the FCK team manually coordinates the school meal donations.

Role

Product Designer

Time

4 months

Team

2 Product Designers
1 Product Manager
4 Developers

THE PROBLEM

The FCK team doesn't have the time to coordinate hundreds of meal donations between donors and schools.

THE SOLUTION

A donation platform for donors to partner with schools

I worked with a team of developers & designers to build a MVP of the meal donation platform. The meal donation platform streamlines the donation process by allowing donors to sign up for donation dates needed by schools in their community.

First, select a school in your community 🏫

Next, schedule dates to donate meals 🍽️ 📆

.....And fill in the donation details. You're done! 🥳

The Bumpy Beginning

Starting the project from the ground

A ROCKY START

Missing meal donor interview!

We got the chance to interview every stakeholder, except meal donors. This significantly shaped our initial product requirements of pushing donors to donate more.
Missing a critical stakeholder
Initial Design Goal
How might meal donors donate to as many meal requests as possible?

EARLY EXPLORATIONS

While waiting for research, I assumed that meal donors were highly motivated to donate long-term to schools.

Since schools needed donations throughout the school term, I chose to categorize the meal requests by recurring weekly and one-time commitments that they can sign up for.

VERSION 1

Dividing requests by commitments

  • Able to see more meal requests from schools at once in the gallery view
  • Dividing one-time and weekly requests goes against business goals of encouraging donors to donate more

CHOSEN

Blending all requests

  • Less choices presented make it easier for the user to sign up for a meal request
  • Easier to read through requests in a chronological top to bottom order
I decided to blend all requests visually together because the FCK team was concerned about the favoritism of one-time donations.

USER RESEARCH

Mid-way, I finally got the chance to interview a major meal donor—the owner of Jersey Mike's Subs.

 Woah! To my surprise, I learned some shocking findings that would change the trajectory of the project.
Steven (the CEO) and I chatting

NEARLY EVERYTHING WE KNEW WAS WRONG!

Meal Donors can no longer afford to donate long term.

01 | Inflation prevented meal donors from donating frequently
Financial stress impacted meal donor's willingness to donate, unable to guarantee donations.
02 | Meal donors want only donate to one school
Driving long distance to different school locations also takes an enormous amount of effort.
03 | Meal donors are not the most technologically savvy
Meal donors fall in the older end of the millennial generation.

Pivoting the Product

Using the new research and facts, I aligned the new product requirements for design & engineering teams.
Initial Goal
How might meal donors donate to as many meal requests as possible?
Revised Goal
How might meal donors contribute to their community whenever they can?

NEW PRODUCT SPECS

So team, what exactly are we building?

By now, we had only 2 weeks left for the project. I created user stories based on my interview with the meal donor and presented them to the team. Since donors only want to donate to one school, we moved away from choosing meal requests to schools in the community. Go team!

INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE

Woah, information overload!

Before jumping into design, I identified key information user need at each step of the user journey, matching the user's mental model. Next, I created an information hierarchy, so that I knew what to prioritize when designing.

NEW PRINCIPLES

We strategized principles to follow in designing the meal donation dashboard.

These product principles helped to keep me on track in defining the design vision and direction.
Simplicity
Streamlining the donation process into easy steps.
"Feel Good"
Bringing back storytelling to show how the smallest contributions make the biggest impact on the kids.
Gratitude
Expressing gratitude donations without pressure.

DESIGNING THE DONATION PORTAL

How might meal donors choose a school in their community?

The main variables behind choosing a school are distance & the number of kids. I explored the "match-maker" concept of pairing a meal donors with a school that fit their preferences, and the concept of users finding a school in their community.

VERSION 1

Discovering Nearby Schools

  • Filter panel is not functional because users will rarely change different schools to partner with
  • Choosing a school difficult since they all have the same missions

CHOSEN

Matchmaker

  • Imagery incites storytelling to show who are the faces behind the donations
  • Most frictionless solution as donor does not have to choose between schools
However, after learning all schools shared the same mission, I went with "match-maker" because it was the most frictionless.

But, not all ideas are feasible for development!

My developers faced a road-block of programming a "perfect school match" for a meal donor.  I knew this had to be a solution from the design side because development would be delayed by 2 weeks.
Accurate portrayal of me when developers explain code to me

THE SOLUTION

So instead, we matched the 3 closest schools to a meal donor.

Distance is the biggest decision factor for choosing what school to donate to. As the developers could not guarantee a perfect school match, we provided school options for meal donors to choose from because of the different requirements (donation days available, number of kids to feed, etc).

UX TESTING

After we did a few rounds of testing, we made some critical changes.

Although the donation platform had a 100% completion rate, we discovered that FCK's current design system (3 different colors) didn't serve their need in providing delight to the meal donors for donating. So, the team and I whipped up some illustrations and revamped the design system. Looking good!
Before COVID-19, FCK team members would personally hop on a call to thank the meal donors. Now, that the entire donation process is automated, meal donors felt a lack of appreciation. This extra little "Thank You" message reminded meal donors that even the smallest contributions made a huge difference, fueling their motivation to donate during difficult times.

The Power of Teamwork

Helping the engineering team get prepared for dev hand-off

Couldn't have done it without my team!

Thank you to everyone on the FCK Team & also the Blueprint community for supporting me throughout the process in shipping out my first non-profit project. I'm so proud of what we have created together!

REFLECTIONS

Dear Diary, what went well? And not so well?

01 | The importance of getting all stakeholder’s input early on
Seeing how the design of the meal donor dashboard progressed, design conversations should include all stakeholders, otherwise it can be extremely one sided. Luckily, we were able t
02 | Designing for non-technical folks
Since majority of meal donors were not technically and technologically inclined, I had to balance between old and modern design patterns in the meal donor dashboard. If I had more time, I would have done a final moderated UX testing session with a meal donor, where I ask users to complete a set of tasks.
Made with love and one chocolate strawberry
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