5 months
User Research, Affinity Diagramming, Wireframes, Visual Design
Many students at Georgia Tech purchase meal plans, particularly freshmen, who are required to purchase one. At current rates, freshmen are required to pay $2,420 per semester for a meal plan. Meal plans consist of a number of meal swipes that expire by the end of the semester.
Students who are running out of time to use up their remaining meal swipes have few options. Many use their meal swipes at fast food restaurants located on campus. Students also use their meal swipes to buy food for their friends, but they might not have many friends who are not on the meal plan or their friends may also be stuck in the same situation as them.
Our goal is to design a system which will allow students to share meal swipes they don’t plan on using by the end of the semester with other students.
SURVEYS
We surveyed multiple GT students to gather their input on the current meal plan and, if they currently were not on meal plan, asked about their eating arrangements.
From our findings, we learned that 100% of the students on meal plans had leftover meal swipes by the end of the semester, thus confirming our problem statement that leftover meal swipes is a rampant problem with the meal plan. An incredible 56% of those students had over 100 meal swipes left.
Students not on a meal plan eat either at home or the student center for the majority of their meals.
INTERVIEWS
From our interviews, we asked GT students and GT dining services for their thoughts about the meal plan.
We learned that, despite the lower quality of food, students enjoyed the convenience of the meal plan. A lot of our interviewees were not happy about the thought that meal swipes expire by the end of the semester.
We also learned that many students like to secretly swipe their friends in to combat the leftover meal swipes.
USER PERSONAS
CONVENIENCE
Getting rid of extra meal swipes must be simple to both the providers and the consumers.
SAVING
Providers shouldn’t waste their extra meal swipes.
SHARING
Providers should be able to share their extra meal swipes with others, including friends, family, and the homeless.
Our group decided upon a solution in the form of a mobile application that satisfies the requirements of all three parties (consumers, providers, and GT Dining services) involved along with the design criteria. This app would allow Georgia Tech students to sign in with their credentials and send meal swipes to their friends, donate to a food shelter, or cater for personal events.
To appease GT Dining services, we chose to add a limit to the amount of meal swipes one could donate as we learned that meal swipes are non-transferable due to being tax-exempt during our research.
Our team realized that the issues regarding leftover meal swipes was a rampant issue in the Georgia Tech community. We listened to all sides of the problem space and implemented features into a mobile application that would satisfy all 3 parties.
If we were to do this project all over again, we would focus more on the legal issues that we were not aware of regarding meal swipes. As we delved deeper into our problem space, we talked to GT Dining Services later in our project. However, if we were given the opportunity again, knowing the extremity of the problem, we would have gone to the GT Dining Services earlier and asked for their participation in ideas so that this solution could actually be made available for GT students.