E-meal - A food delivery platform for seniors

E-meal is a project related to designing for seniors. Seniors are less likely to get door-to-door food service than any other group during the pandemic. This project aims to design a community-based food delivery platform to solve elderly hunger. In this exhibition, you will see the blueprint and prototypes which are designed in line with my principles of:

• Elder-friendly
• Reliable
• Personalized
• Win-win-win

Designer	Zixuan Yang
Keywords	Experience design, Food service, Sharing Economy, Design for seniors
Advisor	Tad Hirsch

Why I chose this topic

Because of shutdown orders and public health considerations, many restaurants have closed dine-in services. To reduce the risk of infection, many young people turned to online food delivery platforms instead of dine-in or pick-up to get personalized dishes.

However for the senior group, some of them may have difficulties using food delivery platforms or online payment because they are unfamiliar with smart devices. And since most supplies or food have already been ordered online, the Only things left for them at the stores are empty shelves. Seniors need an elder-friendly food delivery platform to solve elderly hunger during and after the pandemic.

How I conducted my research

The first step is to fully research existing food platforms and understand the features of these sharing economy platforms. This aspect of the study was done through literature research, as well as other age-friendly platforms to clarify the usability of platforms for the senior population.

The second study is relationship building. The best way to understand how seniors behave is to contact the group that knows seniors best instead of contacting the target group directly. In my case, I collaborated with the Greater Boston Chinese Golden Age Center (GBCGAC) and gave technology lectures every week to get to know my target users and built trust with them. At the end of the lectures , I invited 5 of them to join my focus group to help test my proposal and iterate my prototypes.

Focus group

We started our focus group discussion with their current food experience with Meals on Wheels (MOW). At the beginning of the pandemic, no one dared to go to the supermarket to buy groceries , so nutrition meals from MOW met their basic food needs. However, the monotonous menu hugely limited the variety of ingredients that were available to them, so they hope to learn how to use online platforms to order food. They also tried to order food by using Chowbus or Uber Eats, but gave up because they did not know how to create an account or a password or pay online.

I showed my storyboard to the focus group, talked about my design concept and listened to their feedback . I asked about using flyers and ordering by phone. While they were very positive about this approach, they also raised doubts about making online payments and hoped that the traditional cash payment method could still be available.

Service Blueprint

Based on feedback from the focus groups, my observation of seniors’ behaviors during the tech lectures, and previous research findings, I put together a blueprint for the platform. With this platform, seniors will not be not required to use smart devices after signing up, and they can also choose cash as their payment method.

This diagram has four different phases:  onboarding ,  ordering ,  completing , and  renewing . And also, there are four physical evidences in this system:  flyer ,  mobile webpage ,  customized menu  and  cash envelope . The service blueprint follows the principles of being elder-friendly, reliable, personalized and win-win-win, which are concluded from the previous research.

What the final prototype looks like

Prototype Video