Food Deserts
Working with the MSU Student Food Bank to alleviate food insecurity among students
Introduction
The idea for this project came from a design session we did with the MSU Global Center for Food Systems Innovation, where we worked with entrepreneurs creating solutions for agriculture in their communities. We talked about food deserts and food systems with the GCFSI faculty, which gave us the idea to explore food deserts in our local communities.
Research and Expert Interviews
Initially, we planned to do a project in Detroit, as they have some of the largest food deserts in America, but after an interview with Dr. Mike Hamm, an expert in sustainable agriculture and city-region food systems, he pointed us to problems present in our local community. He mentioned that Michigan State graduate and PhD students, especially international ones, regularly do not have enough money to eat on a daily basis and often have to go to the student food bank.
We looked into this further and created a video summarizing our findings, which we shared with our local student population.
User Research at the Food Bank
To understand food insecurity among grad students better, we began volunteering at the food bank several times a week. The food bank director was nice enough to put us at the very front, so we could see what was going on in the waiting room. We also interviewed the food bank director, the volunteers, and some food bank recipients to see what was going on. A surprising number of students were receptive to us interviewing them about their situation. We met undergrad, graduate and professional students from all different fields of study and different cultural backgrounds. Some students were there with friends from the same degree program, while others had brought their children and grandparents along with them.
Findings and Team Synthesis
After each volunteering session, we came back together as a team to debrief on who we had talked to and what we had observed.
Some of our major findings were:
Cultural barriers: We heard almost every language under the sun while at the food bank. Many food bank recipients also didn't know what certain foods were when they saw them at the distribution table.
Room layout: The actual flow of the room was pretty cramped and confusing, as the food bank has to serve 250+ people in the 90 minutes it is open each day. Recipients sign in, take a seat in the waiting room, do an initial intake interview to determine how much food they'll receive from the food bank (based on their financial situation and number of dependents), take a seat and wait again, then receive their food.
Technological barriers: Their computer system was ancient and had students manually enter in ID information each time. Students would need to register up to 3 times (once when checking in, once after their initial interview session, and once after receiving their food).
Prototypes and Ideas
We came up with initial ideas based on our findings above. I asked each team member to pursue the prototypes that they felt most passionate about.
(Left: Card scanner prototype at Hub Expo. Right: Working on the prototype at Local Hack Day)
To address the problem of manually typing in information each time, we developed a card scanner prototype using Java that would scrape the information from students' ID cards and output it to a webpage. We developed this prototype at a school hackathon.
Since cultural and language barriers could sow confusion among food bank recipients, we created some signs in order to give a clear and easy picture of what to do at each station.
To help direct users around the food bank, we created a map with color-coded blocks delineating each area. This map would be placed by the check-in and would show students where to go for each item.
Conclusion
Here's my talk about our project and process at the Ignite UX Michigan conference:
