Givers
Waste Less, Feed More, Think Global, Act Local.
The Basics
Product
Givers
Team
5 people
Time
3 months
My Role
Product Designer
The Problem
80 billion pounds of food and equates to more than $161 billions are thrown away in America annually.​ 50% are still edible. 37 million people in this country are struggling with hunger, including 11 million children.​
​
Givers is designed to engage local communities to fight against hunger. For consumers who are looking for food at a discount, for local grocery stores who are looking for ways to dispose their surplus produce and prepackaged meals, and for local charities who are sourcing nutritional ingredients to feed more people, Givers is a mobile marketplace connecting food surplus to consumers as well as those-in-need in real-time.
​
Source: US Department of Agriculture, (2019). Definitions of Food Security.
Coleman-Jensen, A., et al. (2019). Household Food Security in the United States in 2018. U.S. Department of Agriculture Economic Research Service.
Usere & Audience
The target users of Givers are Grocers, Consumers and Charity Groups from local communities.
​
For Local Grocers, despite their own efforts, they still have a surplus of food that goes to waste. They are open to finding creative ways to sell the food or donate it, but don’t have the resources to commit to this on a regular basis.
​
For Individual Consumers, they are embracing local food delivery options but are frustrated with the increasing costs. they are overwhelmed with the amount of information on food-rescue and don't know where to start or how to best contribute.
​
For Charity groups, they are local food takers who are feeling more stressful to support local food insecurity. The pandemic has not only created a surplus of food insecure, it has made the operation more complex and impacted the quality of service.
Team & Role
Working as a Product Designer on the team, I collaborated with 4 other team members, including another peer designer and 3 other Engineering Managers. The goal of this project was to explore the market opportunity, create a solution for an urgent pain points of target users, and deliver high-fidelity prototypes for the final solution.
​
I coordinated and led all facets of design including: design research, information architecture, user task flows, interactions, visual, product and prototyping. I also defined our Branding Message to be "Think Global, Act Local".
Design Process
In order to define the problem space and identify design opportunities, we started out by conducting User Research with people who belonged to the 3 target user groups. We reached out to our own network to recruit users in the Consumers and Local Charities groups, and also visited grocery stores in our different neighborhoods and talked to their owners or managers.
Our initial idea was to target larger chain stores, as we assumed that they would have more surplus food and more capabilities to contribute in the communities. However, from our research, we realized that larger chain stores normally were more restrained from their corporations' regulations. Store managers didn't have much freedom in deciding how to deal with the surplus goods. On the other hand, smaller local grocers were more engaged in their community and bore heavier financial burden caused by unsold products, therefore they showed greater motivation to reduce waste and help others in their community.
​
​After sifting through all of the research learnings, we were abele to decide what product was worth building, as well as what it should accomplish. We agreed that the final solution should be a platform that would drive great community engagement and adopt the local-serves-local model to incentivize individuals joining a network to fight for common cause.​
We identified the key specs that had to be included in this project, and prioritized these key specs in terms of how efficient they were in resolving the pain points of each target user group was facing.
Key Specs to Meet Each User's Needs
Local Grocers want to:
​
1. Easily add and edit merchandise on their online profile for sale;
​
2. Manage orders and send direct messages to customers, featuring a supporting and active community engagement.
Local Consumers want to:
​
1. Quickly find merchandise they want to shop;
​
2. Shop and make donations seamlessly;
​
3. Customize their donation options, including values and recipient charities.
Local Charities want to:
​
1. Track history of donations made by local community members;
​
2. Send direct messages for community engagement.
User Interface & Interaction Design
Local Grocers
Seamless Upload
Local grocer users can add new food items to their available inventory by selecting previously sold items, or they can list new items with a quick picture and a few text entries.
Local Grocers
Community Platform
Givers dashboard allows users to access open orders to complete. The chat feature allows grocers to notify the customer when their food is ready for pickup and send them a quick thank you for supporting their local small businesses!
Local Consumers
Powerful Searching Algorithm
Givers allows users to search by location, store name, types of goods, and searching history. At left is a demonstration of searching by map. Consumer Users can quickly locate available stores that are closest to them.
Local Consumers
Intuitive Shopping Experience
Intuitive navigation. Shop at ease.
Local Consumers
3 Donation Methods to Choose
When consumers are checking out, they get prompted to make a donation.
They can choose which donation method they prefer -- round up their order to the next dollar, donate money in the value of meals, or customize the value on their own.
Choose the Recipients
They can also designate which non-profit organization as the recipient. On the organization's little profile, donors can quickly access some critical information about the organization, feeling 100% in control of their own contribution.
Local Charities
Keep Good Track of Donation History
Local charity users can keep a good track of the history of donations made by local community members on Givers. Both food and monetary donation details are saved and trackable.
Local Charities
Direct Messaging for Community Engagement
Local charity users can send a direct message to donors, confirming pick-up time or simply sending a thank-you note!
The Outcome
Givers bridges the B2C market with social impact and a local-serves-local model in a single solution. For every meal purchased through Givers at a discount, consumers can donate a meal to feed local community members in need. Consumers stop breaking the bank in groceries and takeout, grocery stores reduce waste and salvage revenue and communities have access to resources to help fight local hunger.
