Participant Brainstorm

For this session, I set up three flows—Onboarding, Finding Food Resources, and Finding Recipes. I created post-it notes in several colors—yellow for screens, blue for information, and pink for actions. For the onboarding flow I also used green for customizable options. The sessions lasted about an hour. I did them separately instead of as a group due to scheduling conflicts, but I actually think it worked better this way—I feel like I got a clearer idea of what they really thought, without them being influenced by each other. Also, I think conflicting personalities may have caused unnecessary friction in the process. I gave each participant the task for the flow, and let them build it themselves using the premade post-its. I also provided a purple post-it so they could create their own if something was missing.

Brainstorm for Finding Food Flow

While the participants were building the flows, I had them tell me their thought process so I could understand what was important to them and what wasn’t. It was interesting to hear their takes on things, particularly the language. I think I’ll need to do more testing in this area as well. In my surveys, there was a lot of discomfort around institutional sounding language, so I need a way to describe things without sounding too “official” and especially not too charity focused. 

Brainstorm for Onboarding Flow

The first participant rode public transit, so was very interested in filtering for food resources, and wanted to find locations with the most variety so she didn’t waste a trip. The other had a lot of experience using food banks, and suggested the idea of the ingredient search, so people could find info and prep ideas for unfamiliar foods. I also learned that not as many people knew about free fridges as I initially thought! Neither of my participants were familiar with the concept, even though we have a network locally. I’ll need to figure out a way to share that kind of information.

Resulting Onboarding flow with architecture

One other thing I learned from these sessions is that I will need many more participants to help test, because people’s experiences are so varied. I am currently researching digital testing platforms so I can get more people recruited.