Fighting food waste
Strategizing and formulating a solution to prevent food waste for generations to come.
Food Runners was started in 1987 by Mary Risley (a pioneer in the Bay Area food community who started Tante Marie’s Cooking School as a full-time professional school), with a small group of concerned professionals. They came up with a simple idea: donate food from those who have too much to those who have too little. She persuaded some colleagues in the food industry to save their excess food, which she and a few friends picked up in their cars and delivered to local shelters and food programs. Today, Food Runners has over 250 active volunteers, and more than 450 restaurants, caterers, grocery stores, farmers’ markets and other businesses regularly donate perishable and prepared foods.
There was no need for us to ‘rebuild the wheel’ here. It was extremely shocking to learn that 44% of the food wasted in the U.S. is derived from households. Knowing this, we decided to focus on how our design could help to prevent food waste habits within the average U.S. household.
BJ Fogg's Model of Behavior Change shows that a behavior can only be changed when a person has the motivation and ability to change the behavior. They also must be triggered enough to do so. We wanted to make sure that our solution incorporated all 3 elements of this persuasive design to increase the chances of it being effective.
We received 46 replies from a survey we sent out. We were able to lay out the results and draw some insights that would help to shape our design with affinity mapping.
The average person finds convenience, proximity & knowledge about what foods to donate as the primary barriers to donating food.
Inspired by our interview with a local food kitchen manager, we figured that a great way to utilize our client’s existing social media resources would be to include interesting, heartfelt stories that show how organizations like Food Runners help hundreds of people everyday.
Donors can also relax knowing that the Good Samaritan Act of 1996 waves all liability on their food donations.
Our research helped to produce quite a few solutions like mobile apps that focused on delivery services and remotely engaging with Food Runners, but ultimately we always arrived at a wall that led us to believe that the average adult would not consistently put forth the effort to combat their food waste habits. There are just too many responsibilities in the average adult's life for them to also try and incorporate this new habit into their lives just because we told them it would help others.
However, maybe the answer wasn’t to focus on the present, but to instead focus on the future. What could we do to help cultivate preventative habits of food waste in future generations? With all of this in mind, we decided to pivot our design from a tech-focused solution to a more sustainable service design. We would focus on how our designed solution could impact the kids of today, the adults of tomorrow.
Students
With this education and involvement introduced at an earlier stage in life, these concepts and practices will evolve into habits and second nature as these children journey through life and pass them down to further generations.
Parents
Parents will primarily benefit from the convenience of the donation process and the proximity of the donation locations. Additionally, sponsored events could provide opportunities for families to spend time with each other and learn about the impacts of food waste.
Schools
School districts and school leaders will be eligible for additional tax deductions and grants, while benefiting from an increased school community, reduced dropout rates, and educational enrichment...all at a minimal cost.
I created this storyboard to help paint the picture on how our designed solution helps to solves the biggest issues of convenience and proximity.
A family uses the Food Runners school program to donate extra food at home.
Final design visuals include our vision for promoting any partnership news and events on both the client's and schools' websites. We would also add stories to the client's social media for constant exposure and to help evoke feelings of giving.
Our designed solution would include:
School programs
Similar to food can drives, a partnership with the San Francisco Unified School District (SFUSD) would allow families to easily deliver donations to their kids' schools, addressing issues of convenience and proximity. Kids/classes could also be incentivized to participate with rewards related to how much they donate.
Social media stories and school website presence
Life changing stories like the one we heard from our visit to a local food kitchen would be published on Food Runners' social media platforms to help remind people of the good that can be done when working to battle this cause.
Sponsored events
Our primary feature to encourage participation is to organize client-sponsored events focusing on nutrition, alternative and creative methods in which to utilize unused food, and practice food sustainability. These can also be viewed as additional opportunities to create “family time”.
I think one of the biggest lessons that I Iearned in helping to create this solution is that the best solution may not always equal a tech solution. As strange as that may sound in today's society, when considering the client’s needs and resources, we decided that this non-digital designed solution would be the most feasible Minimal Viable Product (or Service in this case).
Looking forward, we’d like to run a beta test of the program with 5 schools in the Bay Area. This would let us perform some contextual research and usability testing to optimize the process for our users. In the long term, a more interactive element of gamification could be introduced to help further keep the children engaged.
This was a concept project and we were never in communication with Food Runners. However, our professor claimed that our design was one of the most thoughtful UX designs that's ever been presented by a group of her students and she highly suggested that we reach out to Food Runners to present the idea. We reached out via email but we were unable to get into contact with anyone.
Improving the university's gift giving experience by redesigning the giving landing page and payment form.
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