Background
Georgia Tech’s Division of Student Life oversees Klemis Kitchen, a food pantry for Georgia Tech students with dietary needs and financial concerns that limit their access to proper nourishment. My team had the opportunity to improve the operation of Klemis Kitchen.
Project Vision
My Klemis is a resource management system, comprised of an app and POS system, that improves the distribution of inventory and communication between Klemis Kitchen staff, volunteers, and students.
User Testing + Observation
Our team toured the current Klemis Kitchen facilities and interviewed active staff and volunteers. Due to confidentiality issues, we were unable to interview students that are a part of the Klemis Kitchen program. This challenged our team to create concise and substantial questions for our anonymous feedback.
External Communication
Facilitating the acquisition and approval of donated goods can be a challenge, and 100% of the staff members and volunteers that we interviewed agreed. Klemis Kitchen had no standard for communicating who would pick-up and collect deliveries from each donation partner.
"Sometimes we miss our deliveries from Panera Bread because of unread group messages."
"Sometimes we miss our deliveries from Panera Bread because of unread group messages."
Internal Communication
Our team was surprised to discover that Klemis Kitchen is a lightly monitored facility. No staff member is present in pantry locations unless a volunteer is cleaning or accepting a delivery. There is also no system to track or notify students of the pantry's inventory.
"We send students an email once a week to say that food has been restocked. It's quite ambiguous."
"We send students an email once a week to say that food has been restocked. It's quite ambiguous."
After gathering user feedback, we developed three main goals to guide our work.
We then ran through cycles of ideation and user feedback as we updated storyboards and user flows in order to refine our concept.
Staff Action ●
Once donations are picked up or delivered, the Klemis Kitchen staff enters the food into the POS system to update the inventory for both volunteers and students to view.
Student Response ●
Students can view the inventory remotely using the My Klemis app. Once students take away food, they can use photo recognition or the POS system to scan out their food and update the digital inventory.
Proposed User Journey
Thanks to countless whiteboard markers and sticky notes, our team was able to create wireflows for both the student and staff app modes.
The staff and student modes presented their own unique needs. View how we met these needs and fulfilled our goals of improved communication, coordination, and growth support.
Takeaways
My Klemis made me realize just how important thorough user research is, especially when developing one experience for multiple user groups. The repetitive nature of our ideation and user feedback sprints pushed our team farther than we thought possible, which only makes me more eager to tackle challenging projects in the future.
We are excited to share that our My Klemis app and POS system is currently being developed by several groups of Georgia Tech students as a part of the Computer Science Senior Capstone Competition. Stay tuned for updates as this project becomes a reality on our campus!
