FIELD OF WHEAT
January - March 2020
PROJECT OVERVIEW
The Story:
For my interactions design course, my team and I must work to figure out how to utilize digital touch points to encourage young professionals to donate or be active in the fight against hunger. This project was sponsored by Feeding America who is the second largest nonprofit organization against the fight against hunger.
My Impact:
I partook in the whole process of the design project, but my main responsibilities were Design Research, Concept Testing, and Design Direction
SKILLS
Design Research tools
Concept Drawing
Storyboarding
Wire-framing
Figma
MY TAKEAWAYS
I learned how to take the initiative to utilize Google Slides for concept testing just to get the ideas acrossed and looked at before developing a fully-functional prototype on Figma. While it is seemingly unsophisticated and unusual, utilizing Google Slides for the initial setup of understanding helps not only the users but the team visualize how it could look like in terms of color, font, placement, and functionality of features. This very very low-fidelity prototype still presents a great initial story for everyone to see and understand.
Additionally, it’s important to have as many professionals as possible to look at and give feedback on the final presentation. This will help understand who the audience is and how to effectively present the final solution clearly to present a cohesive and inspiring story.
I also learned that it’s really hard to balance tensions and satisfy all the requirements coming with altruistic behaviors in a seemingly perceived saturated outlet. Utilizing social media is a tough movement even though in the case of Feeding America it wasn’t a region yet touched in all of their partnerships.
PROCESS
Execution: What I either participated in or I took sole ownership of for this project
Objective: The goals or purpose of what I executed
Result: What actually happened from the Execution
PROBLEM DEFINING
Execution: Deciding in what direction our team must aim for in digital interaction
Objective: Set a goal for the team surrounding encouraging young professionals to donate or be more active in the fight against hunger
Result: Found a How Might We statement: “How might we leverage our users’ social incentives to donate while not making them feel self-conscious about the way their altruism is displayed?”
STAKEHOLDER MAPPING
Execution: Find how do stakeholders relate to the user in the realm of Feeding America
Objective: Figure out what partners of Feeding America would be a good start to outreach for a third-party support
Result: Learned that the majority of partnerships with Feeding America have strong social media departments that we can utilize as a digital touchpoint
MOODBOARDS & NARRATIVES
Execution: Create a vision board with colors, font, and stock images along with a written narrative
Objective: Start piecing together a story of the user group through digital interaction
Result: Realize that the narrative and mood boards actually don’t align with the expectations of the class and user groups, so we needed to talk with more young professionals
DESIGN RESEARCH
Execution: Interviewed young professionals from ages 18-35 and downloaded all the information from those interviews
Objective: Better understand how various incentives might generate more activation and donations from young professionals through strategic digital interactions
Result: Learned that there are altruistic behaviors that provide an incentive for people to donate through social media platforms and found additional insights like social incentive and image, transparency, and individual causes (personalized incentives). We also found two huge tensions: Quick & Easy vs. Sufficient Transparency and Spread the Message vs. Not Bragging
CONCEPT TESTING & STORY BOARDING
Execution: Articulate specific features and functions of an idea for a concept
Objective: Create and hypothesize a positive interaction between the user and the digital concept
Result: Design an initial concept that promotes donations through a badge on a social media platform while also providing full transparency of the donation process and personalized choice for the user
CONCEPT TESTING
Execution: Visualize and frame our concept and test that concept with young professionals
Objective: See how well our concept translates to excite and encourage young professionals to donate
Result: Our concept peaked their interest and inspired young professionals with its transparency and personalization, but they questioned the feasibility of our concept within business operations of Feeding America
FINAL PROTOTYPE & PRESENTATION
Execution: Based on the feedback received during concept testing, start iterations of our concept into a functional figma prototype
Objective: Get a digitized version of our final concept to present to the Feeding America office in Chicago
Result: Received positive feedback and satisfied response from Feeding America as well as a new avenue to utilize their digital interactions where they never thought of before
FINAL SOLUTION
The Field of Wheat is a badging system that inspires users across social media platforms to join the fight against hunger in the US. By giving donors a wheat symbol for their usernames and handles, they can show their solidarity to the cause and inspire others to do the same.
This provides a platform through social media sites and can be non-intrusive but informative in the fight against hunger. Additionally, this idea is partner agnostic where the concept can be adapted on not only on casual social media networks (i.e. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram) but also professional (i.e. LinkedIn), dating (i.e. Hinge), and hobby (i.e. Pinterest) apps and sites.
