Redesigning the school lunch service
to increase efficiency and accuracy in meal programs
Team
Sagarika Konanuru,
Anamika Menon
Duration
6 weeks
Method
Preliminary Research, Stakeholder Interviews, User Testing, HEART workshop
Role
UX Research, Service Design, UI Design
The Opportunity
Public schools across the United States offer school lunch meal programs; however, very few students actually participate in this program due to a variety of challenges and constraints. Here lies our opportunity to understand and improve the system through identifying the challenges using user research and prototyping.
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​The project primarily focuses on high school students and aims to reimagine the service ecosystem to satisfy their very unique needs while simultaneously considering the needs of the diverse stakeholders.
Process
Sprint 01
Research
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Preliminary Research
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Academic Research
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System Mapping
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​Program Brief
Sprint 02
Design
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Stakeholder Interviews
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Affinity Mapping​
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Mockup Design
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User Testing
Sprint 03
Redesign
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Mockup Redesign
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User Testing
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User Story
Project Objectives
To guide our research and design process, we created a HMW statement:
"How might we improve the school lunch service with technology - to create a new nutritious meal service that is healthy and exciting for children, reassuring for parents and efficient and easy to implement for the school"
The Outcome
Redesigned touchpoints
We re-imagined the school lunch service by (re)designing multiple touchpoints that we identified as the main issues within the ecosystem. By redesigning these elements, we believe that the entire experience would be improved for all our stakeholders, including students, parents, and school staff.
Digital portal
Healthy eating Program
Organized back-end
Streamlined service
Waste management
Redesigned service map
Redesigned touchpoints in blue. Click to see service map in full size.
Redesigned story board
Process
We focused our redesign into three sprints - with an informal presentation to our peers at the end of each sprint, where we re-aligned our focus and got critical feedback on our design process.
Sprint 1
Preliminary Research
For preliminary research, we looked at several academic journals for trends in school health, and public health and nutrition. We also noted reports by the USDA in terms of food handling and packaging.
Among programs that now charge for meals, Average Daily Participation (ADP) dropped by 23.1% for breakfast and 13.2% for lunch.
Based on survey by the School Nutrition Association (avg difference comparing Oct. 2022 and Oct. 2021 ADP)
Sprint 2
System Mapping
To get a clear picture of the whole ecosystem, we then mapped out the whole process in a
'system map'.
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Using the map we created, we could segregate the different processes into pre-service, back stage, front stage, and post-service to identify individual touch points, and stakeholders to do further research on.
Stakeholders
We then further divided the stakeholders we identified through the system map into two levels:
Primary Stakeholders
Home
School
Secondary Stakeholders
After pinpointing the most important stakeholders to the lunch service period - within the school and home, we identified 4 individuals - 2 Parents, 1 Teacher, and 1 Member of a School Board to further interview and understand their likings and painpoints with the current lunch service experience.
After affinity mapping our insights from each interview, we saw two high level themes in the issues:
Concerns regarding health and nutrition
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current lunch food is unhealthy and lacks nutrition
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children currently don't have a healthy relationship with food
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quality of food is inconsistent
Inefficient school lunch process
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concerns regarding allergen information awareness and monitoring
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queueing in line is inefficient for children
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lack of feedback channels for parents
Sprint 3
Problem Statements
We then took the main issues from our research and stakeholder interviews and redefined them into problem statements:
01
Its challenging for school officials to track students’ dietary needs & restrictions due to lack of a centralized platform.
Single source of truth
How might we be more inclusive and cautious of student’s food needs, and include parents in the process?
02
Schools find it challenging to track number of students signing up for meals leading to food wastage.
Increase efficiency
How might we help schools anticipate and prepare the right amount food to reduce food wastage?
03
Students lack interest and are reluctant to sign up/ participate in the schools meal program.
Holistic engagement
How might we get students excited and involved in the school meal program?
Sprint 3
Proposed Solutions
One stop digital touchpoint
Problem
How might we be more inclusive and cautious of student’s food needs, and include parents in the process?
Proposal
By designing a one stop digital touchpoint, we created a digital touchpoint where parents can effectively monitor, manage and provide feedback on their child’s meal preferences.
This digital portal would also serve as a single source of truth for the school officials to efficiently monitor the child's allergies on the school premises.
Streamlined grab and go process
Problem
How might we help students spend lesser time in line picking up lunch, and more time socializing over meals?
Proposal
A streamlined check-in process linked to students id cards (pre-loaded with dietary needs, meal selections) that guides them to the right meal counters.
Step - wise meal selection process
Meals are served in color coded plates by dietary restrictions
Student visually selects meal and reads ingredient list, then taps their ID card at counter
Machine provides visual and audio output indicating if student may pick up meal based on their allergen information
Student then picks up meal and joins friends for lunch
Parents can learn what child picked up for lunch through portal
Healthy Eating Programs
Problem
How might we get students excited and involved in the school meal program?
Proposal
A series of programs help students develop a healthy relationship with food and enhances their understanding of nutrition, health, and food disposal.
Activities like meal planning with teachers, food prep with cafeteria staff, composting with waste disposal workers, and food donation with parents could help enhance children's relationship with food and health.
Prototype Testing
Roleplay Activity
By conducting a role-play activity with our colleagues, we could re-create the scenario at the cafeteria during lunch time, presenting them with the following scenario:
Scenario
​“It’s lunchtime! Imagine you’re a <dietary preference> middle school student who’s allergic to <allergen>.
Using your ID card to tap on the counters, pick up your lunch meal.”
Students found it really convenient to pick up their meals by themselves without having to wait in line. But they wondered, what happens when they forget their card?
Takeaways and next steps
The grab and go nature of the re-imagined school lunch process fosters independence and autonomy among students while significantly reducing the pressure and stress on the service providers.
It also serves as an easy method to record and deliver information to parents without burdening the school staff or students.
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For next steps, we conducted a HEART workshop to set metrics to measure the outcome of our recommended proposals, once implemented.
