FoodSmart for Snapchat
Streamline access to food assistance resources for Snapchat users in need.
Academic Project
Project Overview
At the start of this project we were tasked with developing a new feature for Snapchat that addresses problems relating to food insecurity. Through research we found that users lacked awareness of the resources available to them, as well as faced various stigmas that surround using these resources. Our feature, FoodSmart, successfully addresses these problems by fostering a community that shares resources and knowledge about food resources with each other.
My Role
Product Design, UX / UI, Project Management
Duration
2 Week Agile Sprint
Client
Snap Inc and Next Shift Learning
My Team
Design - Betty Shin
Engineering - Winston Giang, Megan Tieu
Marketing - Sophia Cortez, Soleil Cardenas
The Challenge
Over a two week design sprint, we were tasked with creating and building a new feature prototype for Snapchat that brings attention to a problem relating to food insecurity. Working as a cross functional team of marketers, engineers, and designers, we were tasked with leveraging existing features on Snapchat to address the users' needs and drive a call to action.
Our Solution
We created FoodSmart for Snapchat. FoodSmart is an integration within Snapchat Maps that would allow users to find food assistance resources near them while also learning from and sharing with the larger FoodSmart community. The feature lives within Snapchat Maps and populates the map with important locations. These locations would include places that accept EBT, offer food discounts, offer discounts to EBT cardholders, or are community submitted resources like foodbanks or food fridges. To bring in the community aspect and adress the issue of stigmas, we implemented a community sourced “Did you know...” section. This section shares helpful tips and tricks to everyone using FoodSmart for Snapchat.
Research
Subject Matter Expert Interview
We were paired with a non-profit advisor, Foodwise, at the start of our design sprint. Foodwise is a 501(c)(3) non profit dedicated to growing thriving communities through the power and joy of local food. Through this talk we discovered:
Key Takeaways
- Educating users about food assistance is the first step to fighting food insecurity
- Increased awareness and education reduces stigma
- There are plenty of resources for food insecure people
Desktop Research
After our interview with Foodwise, we conducted further research to uncover more insights. While food insecurity is a global issue, we focused on California during this research. Here’s what we found:
A blog that shows how to leverage your EBT card.
Of the 14,786 young adults in the sample, 11% were food insecure.
Los Angeles county was enrolling just 69% of residents who were eligible for CalFresh
User Interviews
We had multiple team members who have had experience using EBT cards, as well as other members in the Snapchat organization that has had experience being food insecure. We talked to them to discover more about their experiences. We found that transportation to access food resources and accessibility of the resources was an important factor for them. Multiple people also shared their dissatisfaction with the signup and discovery process of these programs, like EBT. One user shared anger that they needed to drive far out of their way every month to apply for their EBT benefits. While this isn’t the case anymore, we noticed a theme of feeling that it took too long to get accepted. This started to paint the picture of why so few people enroll in these programs. It’s not easy to get access to these resources.
Our Audience
Our users are ages 13-26, BIPOC individuals on Snapchat who are open to finding support but are unsure of where to look. We noticed through speaking to our non-profit, FoodWise, and doing desktop research that there are plenty of different types of resources in the community, but there are some major issues in getting these resources to those in need.
Initial Problem Statement
How might we promote food assistance programs and build a sense of community amongst our users?
Ideation
Affinity Mapping
Once we had our How Might We statement, we spent 10 minutes brainstorming as many solutions as we could. I helped to facilitate this brainstorming session where we each ideated 10-15 unique solutions to our How Might We statement. Once the 10 minutes were up, we started to group our findings on the whiteboard. At this stage, our solutions were very broad and we were trying to find ways that we could implement a solution that utilizes multiple functions of Snapchat (Maps, Camera, AI. Chat, Stories). We decided to push forward with three ideas:
A Snapchat Lens (lens are custom made filters that are interactive and can essentially be mini apps) that scans food items to tell you information about that food item while also giving you recipes for that item.
A recipe sharing video function that would allow users to find a recipe, and then find a location to source the ingredients from. These locations would either be EBT friendly stores, or food banks. Users would then be able to share the recipe they created with an exclusive community.
A forum that is accessible via a location on the maps page. This forum would allow users to chat about this location and share helpful information with each other. This solution was also focused on informing the user of the inventory of items at the location.
Sketching
My design partner and I took our top 3 ideas and started sketching them out. We were trying to see how these ideas would work and how the information might flow through the interaction. We only had enough time to explore idea 2 and idea 3. After returning to our group we pitched our concepts to them. We then later pitched it to another group and we had the best responses to idea #3 because of the forum / maps feature.
Refining Idea #3
After running our idea past a few more people, we received a lot of mixed feedback. Some people praised it, while others didn’t like it at all. Some of the feedback we received questioned if we were actually creating a solution to a problem we found. Through a few conversations with our supervisors, we decided we would revisit our How Might We statement which we then refined. This refined how might we statement helped us to ideate this direction with the maps feature you see above. I built out a potential flow and look into how this app might work. Our idea now focused on bringing locations and information right into the users hands.
We revisited our non profit advisor talk, research, and unstructured user interviews and focused in on the lack of awareness and education surrounding food assistance programs.
Refined Problem Statement
How might we streamlineaccess to food resources forSnapchat users like Amber?
Wireframes
Once we had a solid foundation for our concept we started to wireframe. There was still some ambiguity amongst the team about how this would work, but I knew that we just needed to start designing so that we could have something guide our thinking. We decided on a few main functions for the feature that we would focus on.
Main Functions
- Locate resources near you on Snap Maps
- Use MyAI Chat to find relevant resources near you
- Submit a tip / location to the community
Testing
We tested the feature amongst ourselves and pitched our idea to other teams to gather as much feedback as we could. I realized that there were some areas that would benefit from simplification. One key area was the resources, instead of having a filter for business based resources and community submitted resources, we combined them and differentiated the types of resources by using icons.
Final Solution
Clickable Prototype
After running our ideas past a few different people on different teams, we began to refine our idea.