Neighbors in Need
Helping a neighbor, one grocery trip at a time.
17 Indigo Award winner 2022
Roles & Responsibilities
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Flex Lead - Research & Interaction
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User Research: Interviews, User Mindsets, Social listening, Affinity Mapping
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UX Design: Wireframing, Interface design, Prototyping & User testing, Visual Design
Project Details
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Spring 2021
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10 Weeks
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Team: Savannah Wilkinson, Andrew Goodridge, Varun Khatri, Tova Tillokbrand, Raymond Wong, Nico Zafarana
Final Deliverables
Overview
1 in 6 children in America struggle with hunger. That's 13 million children in total.
17% of all children live in households that lack access to adequate food and basic necessities.
Children living in poverty, or at the threat of homelessness want to get out of their situation but it is not an easy path out.
Our topic of interest is preventing youth homelessness and increasing mobility amongst young adults who experience some form of homelessness, unaccompanied by a parent or guardian over the course of a year.
Problem
Youth living in poverty or at-risk of homelessness struggle due to their lack of basic needs such as food, water or hygiene supplies not being fulfilled. Additionally, resources are not organized to be distributed effectively to those in need, and children are not being able to plan effectively for the foreseeable future causing them to be stuck in an infinite loop.
How do we find these resources, synthesize them and provide them to those who need it the most?
Solution
Neighbors in Need caters to at-risk youth’s personalized needs by providing them with the basic necessities on a day-to-day basis. We give donors an opportunity to connect with the receiver on a personal level; while providing a seamless donation experience that integrates with their day-to-day shopping routine.
Our Methodology
Research Methods
User Interviews (3)
Collect first-hand reports of current and prior experiences to narrow pain points and understand the target users' situation.
SME Interviews (5)
To gather expert-level opinion on the current resources available, and understand their interaction with the teens to discern a feasible solution.
Online Social Listening (30+)
To validate the problem area with a specific user group both quickly and efficiently.
Affinitization
We categorized the data, drew relationships between them, and generated insights.
Research Themes & Insights
After collecting Insightful data from our research methods, we synthesized the collected data from the research methods into an affinity map to help form insights and brainstorm design ideas to problem solve.
Resources are not organized to be distributed effectively to those in need.
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Poverty is a complex issue that cannot be solved with a single solution, and existing resources are not in the hands of those who need them most.
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Different types of teens and archetypes need to be catered to in order to address their particular needs and situations.
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Social workers are often the only bridge between the teens and the resources.
Change isn’t impossible, but it is extremely difficult for youth at risk of poverty.
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Improving one's situation requires more than a person’s help. Teens face issues beyond their control, and the internal and social struggles in improving oneself undermine the effort and the results of change.
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Lack of empathy and understanding harms the situation because some people are trying and they don't choose to live the way they are. This hurts their progress to recover and holds them back.
At-risk youth are unable to plan effectively for an uncertain future.
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Life is already difficult enough for at-risk teens that even if they want to plan for the future, it is difficult to know where to start, what to do, and how to plan.
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Lack of learning life-skills while growing up affects their future.
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"It was hard to manage money when you had never had money before."
HMW's
With the insights and user segments, we formulated many design questions and prioritized them into our top 4 questions.
HMW streamline the process of looking for resources and distributing them to teens and their families?
HMW help at-risk youth perceive their future more positively and take actions towards it?
HMW make changing so alluring that it does not look like an intimidating or impossible option?
HMW help young students learn soft skills they otherwise don’t learn in school to help them out of poverty?
Mindset
We identified and segmented the attitudes into 4 mindsets, each mindset represents an attitudinal segment and they help us better understand the beliefs, motivations, and needs of the teens, to better design for teenagers who go through different mindsets over time.
Target Audience
Primary: Beneficiaries
Youth aged 14-19 living in poverty who are seeking a way out of poverty
The optimal age to help them climb out of poverty, with lasting impact.
Secondary: Donators
Aged 16+ Grocery shoppers who can donate basic goods
They serve will be willing and able to donate, has money to donate.
Ideation
We conducted the Crazy 8's, best and worst exercise and mapped the ideas on an Impact and feasibility map.
Initial Concept Variation
Locker Buddies
Lockers placed in community hubs particularly grocery stores that entice parents and their kids to provide basic good for those in need, while rewarding their effort
Pack Aid
A digital platform for social workers enabling them to better manage their cases with a thorough understanding of their needs and change mindset to match them with the right set of resources
Tune Up
A mobile-first online training program linked to a credit card where high school users can learn soft skills while establishing themselves as responsible spenders and building credit history,
Target Audience
Primary: Youth aged 14-19 living in poverty who are seeking a way out
The optimal age to help them climb out of poverty, with lasting impact.
Secondary: Social Workers aged 30+ seeking to help at-risk youth
Serve as a gateway for at-risk youth to access and obtain resources
HMW's
With the insights and user segments, we formulated many design questions and prioritized them into our top 4 questions.
HMW streamline the process of looking for resources and distributing them to teens and their families?
HMW make changing so alluring that not changing looks like an intimidating or impossible option?
HMW help young students learn soft skills they otherwise don’t learn in school to help them out of poverty or at-risk situations?
HMW help at-risk youth perceive their future more positively and take actions towards it?
Concept
Final Concept
Helping Neighbors one grocery trip at a time. Neighbors in Need is a program that allows community members to make direct donations to youth at-risk of homelessness in their area.
Neighbors in Need caters to an at-risk youth’s personalized needs by providing them with the basic necessities such as food, personal hygiene products, clothing, and medicine on a day-to-day basis.
Donors
Anyone in the community with disposable income can come forward to help those in need by donating goods.
An easy, practical way to give back to their community, where they know their donations are being sent to those in need.
Recipients
Receivers are anyone student-aged in the community in need. Neighbors in Need runs primarily through middle and high schools.
An easy, discrete way to request basic items to keep their family afloat during hard times
Donation & Collection
Neighbors donate basic necessities, which can be collected by the recipient after entering a code to open the locker.
Smart & Safe lockers
Smart lockers collect and house donated items, as well as safely distribute them to the recipients.
Packing Tracking System
Item requesting and package tracking for Neighbors in need. SMS messages and reward system for donors.
The Web Portal
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The web portal allows the Neighbor in Need (at-risk youth) to request up to five items they are in need of, listing them from high to low priority.
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They can track the status of their items and receive a unique code once their package is ready to collect.
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The Donor can select a wishlist from which they can pick items to donate.
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After donation, they receive rewards in terms of grocery store points and discount on specific items.
Wishlists
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The donor can pick the number of items to donate from the wishlist.
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Wishlists are personalized and humanized while stating requested items with the barcode on the bottom to scan.
Locker System
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The Donor drops off the items they purchased for their Neighbor in Need in the locker at the grocery store.
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After the items are transferred to the recipient locker, the Neighbor can collect their package by entering a unique code found on their user profile within our web portal.
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Then a post-donation experience, for donors via text message, notifies them after they donate and when the child receives the items.
Donor Benefits
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For any grocery store that the donor purchases items from, benefits in the form of white-labeled “store points” for the donor will be collected from the same grocery store. In this case: Kroger Points.
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Types of benefits: Discount on specific items & Grocery store points, i.e Kroger Points. Donations are tax deductable, too!
User Journey
Locker UI Mid-fi
We created wireframes of the Donor locker UI that included — Explaining the concept and use of the locker, how the user could donate items and track the package.
Donor
Recipient
The wireframes for the Recipient UI explains how the youth in need could collect their package by entering a unique code.
Phone App UI Mid-fi
The wireframes determined how the youth in need would request items, track their package and recieve details to collect their package when it arrives in the locker.
Evaluative User Testing
We conducted low-fi and mid-fi user testing for the donor and recipient respectively and divided them into two phases. Based on the insights gained through user testing, we made iterations along the way and implemented them to improve the recipient and donor's journey.
Phase 1
Roleplay exercises (5)
Pretending to be the students and role-playing the item-grabbing experience from the locker.
Closed Card Sorting (34)
Evaluating the priority of different items that students need.
Expert Evaluation (2)
Evaluating the concept with teachers and school workers on its effectiveness and usage.
Phase 2
Sequential Monadic Test (7)
Going through the key journeys in the two slightly different concepts, and evaluating them both.
Conjoint Study (113)
Evaluating the attractiveness of different features and combination of visual features.
Key Insights & Iterations
We formulated insights and tweaked the concept and made iterations to our interaction model and digital solutions.
Key Changes & Iterations
Donor Locker - Wishlist Section
Friendly micro-animations make deciding to donate a breeze. Pick one item or multiple to donate to a kid in need
Donor Locker - Scanning your Items
Easily scan items to donate them.
Locker door opens after items have been scanned
Recipient Locker - Item Pick Up
4-digit locker code for pickup and Pre-made or custom note to thank the donor.
App Prototype
