Project 2: Divergent Design
Table of Contents:
Feature brainstorming
- Supply Management: Food pantry administrators and volunteers can add and remove goods to track the amount a bank has.
- Volunteer Recommendations: Using scheduling data, the app can identify periods with high pickup volume and provide recommendations for times when many volunteers are needed.
- Food Wish Lists: Clients can mark out-of-stock food items as wanted, which provides a recommendation for food pantries to order more of those items.
- Donation Recommendations: Based on wishlists, purchase history, repeat purchases, and reviews, the app can provide recommendations on what items to buy for a given pantry.
- Dietary Restrictions: Food items can be categorized in the app based on their compliance with particular dietary restrictions (e.g. kosher, halal, vegetarian, gluten free).
- Reservation Queue: For more equitable access, if an item is not available people can queue to reserve it, so once it becomes in stock earlier members get to reserve it quickly and are less likely to wait long to get an item.
- Financial Analytics: Food bank administrators can see the amount spent on specific items as well as item utilization statistics to determine how to spend funds.
- Package Creation: Since some food banks prefer to create packages of food, food banks can combine parts of their inventory into a package and calculate the amount of packages they can create given their stock.
- Nearby Food Banks: The app uses the user’s current location to display nearby food pantries that they are eligible to use on a map.
- Order Restrictions: Food banks can choose to restrict users’ selection options, in terms of size (based on number of household members), or by number of products in specific categories (you must have produce, meat, canned food, and a snack; you cannot order only snacks).
- Stock Drops: Releasing stock in batches makes it easier for people to plan orders around restocks, so stores can choose when to reveal recently added inventory.
- Eligibility Verification: Pantries can require users to input data and have the provided application approved before clients are able to view their storefronts.
- Client Moderation: Food pantries can limit access for users who have missed several pickup slots.
- Accounting for Perishables: Food pantry inventory is based on a FIFO queue to ensure that perishable items with the earliest expiration date are distributed first.
- Reservations: Food pantry clients can reserve particular food items, preventing others from taking it for a period of time.
- Scheduled Pickups: Food pantry clients can reserve a particular pickup slot, out of a range provided by pantry administrators, to collect their orders. The range of available pickups is limited to two days after the current date.
- Volunteer Management: Food pantry administrators can control a list of volunteers and slot them for given times.
- Food Reviews: Clients can rate items that they have picked up with a thumbs up or a thumbs down, so that pantries have another way to measure satisfaction besides overall purchases.
- User Profiles: A client can make a profile that stores relevant information like home address, SNAP card info, household member count, and other information that may be needed to automate the food pantry eligibility process.
- Nutritional Guidance: The app can offer personalized nutritional guidance based on frequently purchased food, like suggesting lower-sodium items.
- Food Information: Clients can easily find the information for a given food item using the food label uploaded by the food pantry, and can see things like caloric content and ingredients before deciding to add an item to their order.
- Stock Notifications: Clients can be notified when a particular item they want is in stock nearby, so they can reserve it and try to snag a pickup slot.
- Food Bank Delivery: Users can order particular food to be brought to their house in case they do not have a car or are not available during pickup times.
- Delivery Carpools: Food banks can combine multiple delivery orders together into a single route for a volunteer to more efficiently bring food using less people.
- Food Desert Identification: Based on client location data, the app can identify areas with very little food access for food banks who are considering expanding to other locations.
- Recurrent Order Recommendations: Based on surges in demand at given times or recurrent demand for particular products, the app can suggest and organize ordering particular stock at the same amount at a given recurring time (i.e. weekly).
- Order Minimums: Food banks can implement order minimums on the number of items required to schedule a delivery to reduce wait times for clients.
- Favorite Food Banks: Users are able to favorite/save food pantries that they use often.
- Food Images: To help users determine which products they want, pantries can upload product images or choose to use provided images from the Open Food Facts API.
- Order Windows: Pantries can designate times when they are accepting orders to give volunteers time to pack orders before pickups begin.
- Progress Tracking: Food pantries can mark each order with Fulfilled/Unfulfilled and a Received/Pending to monitor whether an order has been packed and picked up.
- Real-Time Ordering: Clients order food within a pickup window to pick up as soon as possible, and volunteers make the package in real time, and clients can view progress updates on the status of their order.
Concept outline
Selected Features: Supply Management, Food Wish Lists, Volunteer Recommendations, Dietary Restrictions, Nearby Food Banks, Stock Drops, Eligibility Verification, Accounting for Perishables.
Expiring Item
- Purpose: Stores relevant information for a particular item and controls item availability
- Operational Principle: When the item reaches its accessibility date, it is available for users to claim, and once an item has expired, it is not available for users to claim
Map
- Purpose: Show nearby points of interest
- Operational Principle: After a point of interest is registered, it will appear on the map if near current location
Order
- Purpose: Reserve items to obtain sometime in the future
- Operational Principle: When a user wants to order items from an owner, they can place an order to pick up at some time in the future, and the owner can reject or fulfill the order
Profile
- Purpose: Offer basic information about a food pantry, including eligibility requirements
- Operational Principle: Store and retrieve by location and eligibility
Inventory
- Purpose: Tracks items for a given owner and provides analytics on item stock changes
- Operational Principle: Users can add items to the inventory to indicate that that item is available, and when users want to remove an item with a specific property, the inventory chooses which item to remove by filtering additional properties
Request
- Purpose: Express interest in an item
- Operational Principle: When a user wants an item that is not accessible from an specific owner, the user can send a request to the owner, and the owner can see the request
Comparables
Storyboard and sketches
