Sunny Plates
Design Research | Trademark | Prototyping | UX/UI Design
Overview
There are hundreds of kids across Texas in families struggling with food insecurity. These kids often rely on free/reduced lunch plans to get their meals during the school year. But during the summers, these families have to provide all their meals for themselves.
Goal:
We have decided to organize a summer pop-up program that would help feed K-12 students from families who may be struggling with food insecurity. This program would bring meals to kids who can’t get meals and have no way of getting transportation to meal programs.
Tools Used:
Figma, Adobe Illustrator, & Photoshop
Outcomes:
We created a brochure that parents would receive to sign up their children in the Summer Plates program. We also created an app, website, and a kiosk system for the staff working at the pop-up.
Collaborators & Roles
What I Did
Design Research
Trademark
Prototyping
UX/UI Design
Who I worked with
Belinda Hardaway: Design Research, Prototyping , UX/UI Design, and Illustrations
Isaac Torres: Design Research, Prototyping ,
and UX/UI Design
Sunny Plates
Hundreds of kids across Texas in families struggling with food insecurity. These kids often rely on free/reduced lunch plans to get their meals during the school year. Sunny Plates is a summer meal program pop-up to help children with food insecurity.
Not a fan of research?
Defining the problem
Initial problem discovery
In 2017, 16.3% of people in Houston/Harris County reported being food insecure. Although below the U.S. rate and trending down, food insecurity in Houston/Harris County leaves approximately a million people hungry and at higher risk for chronic conditions such as diabetes, heart disease, obesity, depression and high blood pressure. Almost 1 in 4 children (23.2%) in Houston/Harris County are food insecure.
Why does this problem matter?
Leaves children with chronic health conditions, and disrupts their education and regular brain development.
Data Analysis
Brand Story
Why does it have to be mobile?
To reach children that may not be able to go to school or don’t have transportation. Also those who were affected by COVID.
What is unique about the problem?
We would provide school lunches for low income kids in Houston, TX. Harris County (one of the poorest counties in TX) During the summer.
What are our touchpoints?
Volunteer Kiosk - For keeping track of who has been by the pop-up, student information on food allergies, forms of parent contact, how much food they have on hand
Mobile web Mobile Website - For families to use to sign up for this program and volunteers to apply to aid this program
Informational Brochure - For kids to bring home with information on how to sign up and if they are eligible for the program (in ENG/SPN)
Who’s your targeted audience?
Houston ISD. Mainly targeted at minority families as there is a high percentage in this area 13.9% (Texas is the 4th state in children food insecurity as of 2021 at 23.6%) General – for families during the summer if their children are enrolled in school in the Houston independent school district
Research Analysis
Empathy Map
What we learned?
We learned that the food insecurity amongst children from these rural areas struggle with putting their full efforts into their studies or even their day to day lives due to the lack of nutritional health, which then leads into long or short term health issues.
Research Analysis
Prioritization Grid
What we learned?
We learned and asked ourselves “how might we” for different accommodations for our targeted audience and what would be more achievable for us, it helped us navigate through more aspects we should focus on and what would be beneficial for the children.
Research Analysis
Assumptions and Questions
What we learned?
We learned the risks and uncertainty of this project by evaluating both early into our research process so we can help reduce it and problem solve around it making this pop-up to run as efficiently as possible.
Conclusion
Opportunity Statement
Providing nutritional school lunches for children in Houston ISD in Harris County. There is a larger percentage of families dealing with food insecurity in this district, so we believe it would be a good place to jumpstart this program.
The Solution
We have decided to organize a summer pop-up program that would help feed K-12 students from families who may be struggling with food insecurity. This program would bring meals to kids who can’t get meals and have no way of getting transportation to meal programs.
Research Analysis
User Flow Chart
What we learned?
It helped us narrow down the process on how out initial wireframes would turn out and which pages and or screens were needed to make sure the user experience was easy to understand.
Paper Prototypes
Takeaways from Paper Prototypes
After discussing the paper prototypes we figured out a better layout for information and as well as simplifying the illustrations for a more straightforward approach of information and making the brochure more easy on the eyes.
Final Outcomes
Brochure
The brochure was created to help the children’s parent/guardian learn about the summer meal program Sunny Plates the brochure is both in English and Spanish.
Mobile & Desktop Site
After troubleshooting/ user testing our wireframes for the kiosk system we also learned we needed a home page for the volunteers using the kiosk to have easier access to other students in the directory.
Kiosk
This Kiosk is meant for the staff working at the pop-up to help check-off the list of children that have came by and got their meal as well as having a list of dietary restrictions and allergies.
What I learned:
This project was something my group and I felt really passionate about doing since so many children from low income families get affected with nutritional health issues. Creating this pop-up idea for the summer is something that we thought was super beneficial for those families in need. It gave me a perspective of how design can help change lives of many around us.
Further Development:
With more time and resources our group wants to broaden our research, and mobile and desktop sites, we also wanted to improve on the staff kiosk to help with inventory and the children directory.