Communicating with citizens who may need food and nutritional support is a huge challenge for the incredible people working to end food insecurity. I managed an Attention Span-led project to develop an app that ensures one local community can access all the support and resources available to them.
Prototype, Prototype, Prototype
After designing our wireframes I created and performed testing with a paper prototype of the app. This way, the team and I could work out any issues with flow and user experience before beginning work on the code with our development partners. After walking through several scenarios with a range of potential users, we removed a few superfluous screens and streamlined the user experience.
Development
Over the course of about a month, I co-led the development, working closely with our development and research teams to create and polish the application on both iOS and Android powered devices. Large sets of data needed to be managed / stored in an easily updatable way, and the app also needed to be available in as many of the languages spoken in Mower County as possible. We translated the app into the nine most spoken languages so we could serve the community in the most equitable way possible.
Marketing
Before long we were able to launch the Hometown Food Security Project mobile app on both the Apple store and Google Play store. We immediately began spreading the word to residents of Mower with banners, posters, tabling events, targeted digital ads, local ad placements, and more. We translated a number of the marketing materials into several of the nine languages that app supports as well, further ensuring the whole community would know about this resource.
Results
Smooth, simple, and comprehensive, the finished app has ensured the community gets all the information possible to help them thrive.
To date it has wracked up hundreds of downloads (nearing our initial goal of 500) and is well on it’s way to our stretch goal of 1,000+ users from the local community.
It has already become instrumental in sharing information through notifications, and helped gather data to be used in an upcoming research study about food insecurity and the ways organizations like the Hometown Food Insecurity Project impact local communities.
Other towns, cities, and counties across the country have already expressed interest in creating their own localized version of the app to fiht food insecurity / help in their communities.
