Connecting Companies and Social Associations to Cut Down Food Waste

The idea was to develop a simple solution connecting these different actors in one platform with tools to facilitate their interaction and thus foster their participation and donation.

A Discovery Phase was super important to create a string Minimum Viable Product (MVP).

User Research

A series of Individual Interviews were undertaken to understand how the different types of users would interact with the platform, gathering detailed information about a user's attitudes, desires, and experiences.

Product Roadmap

Elaboration of an extensive product information guide with crucial information about the problem we are solving, the solution we are proposing, the actors involved, how they would benefit from the product and other aspects. At this point, we set the key success and impact measurement indicators we would like to follow during the 6 months after MVP deployment.

We have decided to use Drupal due to its architectural solidity. Drupal logic was key to facilitating the creation of the content hierarchy that we imagined for the Re-Seed platform and the user roles and management needed for all the different stakeholders that would interact with the platform.

Additionally, Drupal made it easier to tackle the level of complexity needed for the platform in terms of data processing, and the many dashboards to showcase data. Also, Drupal's multilingual feature facilitated the inclusion of two languages to the Re-Seed platform: English and French.

We used Platform.sh to host the production site. This enabled us to have separate work environments for previewing and testing during its development and evolution.

1. Brand

   The first step we took was to create a brand that would translate the purpose of the platform and make people relate to the overall mission. Our brand specialist wanted to pass happiness as the overall emotion for users to feel when interacting with the Re-Seed platform. Soft shapes, calming colours, happy faces and an uplifting tone of voice. The brand guidelines stated logo, colours, typography, and print behaviour, and gave some insights into web behaviour.

   
2. Service design

   The product team was dedicated to creating the whole idea of the product. We sat down with the main user of the platform, the social organisation responsible for launching the challenge (La Maison des Familles).

   We had a first design thinking workshop with them to discuss their challenges and needs, and to be sure the solution we were developing made sense for them and responded to their needs. We had the chance to speak with different stakeholders working with them, both internal and external.

   The results of the workshop and a series of interviews and interactions with stakeholders were translated into key elements for the product: main users, flows and processes, data structure, and the platform pages and dashboards.

3. Design

   The web design and iconography for the platform followed the brand guidelines. We decided to develop mockups for both the institutional website and the platform itself.

   For the institutional website, we first worked on a document with the text structure for the site and then worked on the mockup. The colours, typography, images and icons followed the brand book and the product message we wanted to pass. For the platform itself, the design process followed a differently structured line of work due to its complexity.

   The first step was to develop wireframes for the main pages, so we knew the components we had to design and be mindful of the User Experience during this process. This step was developed in close collaboration with the product managers that had the overview of how the user should interact with the platform and what the main features and flows of the different pages should have.

   The results of the service design activities were very important during this phase. Afterwards, our design team started mocking up the pages of the platform. This was an ongoing process throughout the platform implementation and we would go back to the wireframes every time we felt we needed to change something.

   
   

   
4. Development

   This step focused mainly on setting up a Drupal base theme. Here we started implementing the components we defined in the previous stage into HTML markup and CSS styling.

   We managed the project via GitHub using SCRUM methodology, organising work in sprints and releases. We were able to share the progress of the platform with the final client and gather feedback during the development process to improve the platform.

   After all the interactions with our main client/user, once we had the platform ready to use we shared with them a complete Guideline of how to use the platform. More than that, we organized a personal meeting with them for training the staff that would use the platform.

   
   

   
   

La Maison des Familles started to have all of their operations monitored and logistics traced. As a result of having all the processes documented, they were able to have detailed reports with key information for a better understanding of how they can optimize their activities.