Streamlining processes at Pittsburgh COmmunity Food Bank

User Research, UI Design, UX Design, Service Design

In order to update agency partner’s food preferences, the Pittsburgh Community Food Bank needed to go through a process of emails, phone calls, Salesforce, spreadsheets, and NetSuite. To address this disparate and manually taxing system we built a centralized dashboard to alleviate the manual workload from the Food Bank’s client liaisons.

Role
Visual Design Lead, User Researcher

Duration
Jan-Apr 2025

Tools
Figma, User Interviews, Rapid Prototyping, Presentations

For
Greater Pittsburgh Community Food Bank

With
Lillian Hao
Jin-Ah Jeon
Amira Johnson
Khuslen Misheel
Rafael Rivera

Amanda Gebski (Advisor)

Initial hypothesis: agencies don’t understand the preference system

Starting Point

A Very Manual Process

The Food Bank’s system for tracking and delivering orders was a network of legacy and new systems blended together with different people owning each part of the system. A lot of what we assumed would be automated ended up being someone’s daily manual task. This meant every request an agency partner put through the system disproportionately added work on the Food Banks’s side.

Step 1: Salesforce

Project Goals

Reduce manual workload of client liaisons

Reduce agency partner’s complaints

Educate Agency Partners on preference systems

Feedback the Food Bank recieves from the agency partners

Step 2: Excel Spreadsheet

Step 3: Netsuite

Initial Research Methods

Understanding who, what, how

Before we could start anything, we needed to understand the Food Bank’s complex system. We reached out to different members within the Food Bank and their partner agencies, and formed partnerships that continued for the duration of this project.

Research Summary

Observations and domain research

With the support of our client, we conducted interviews with a range of stakeholders involved in the Advance Choice program. This included technical, sales, and operations staff from the Advance Choice team, as well as agency representatives who receive Advance Choice packages.

A New Problem

Adjusting the scope with the client

In our conversations from the Food Bank we learned agency partners were complaining about their produce, and overwhelming the Food Bank’s system with frequent produce adjustment requests. In conversations with Agencies we realized these adjustments were largely an effort to curb food spoilage within their facilities. Therefore, making a more efficient produce adjustment system would make changes happen more quickly, but the underlying issue still remains.

Culminating Problems

People do not feel heard

After synthesizing our research we realized that we needed to have a conversation with our client about the direction of our research. Through this conversation we came to two conclusions: We do not have the infrastructure to provide full transparency on produce quality, however we can provide information on produce stock.

We agreed to continue our research with a new north star: Helping people feel heard.

Prioritize One

Make it clear to agencies which is the preferred method of communication, trying to cater to all has made communication nothing to anyone.

Transparency

Agency Education

Help agencies understand what and how changes are being made. The solution to mitigate to eliminate the need for the back and forth.

Autonomy

Necessary Automation

Identify areas along the user journey that can be automated, skipped, or be better for agency partners to take on,

Efficiency

Regular Updates

For every piece of feedback the Food Bank receives, they must in turn provide a piece of counter-feedback.

Feedback

New hypothesis: agencies understand the system but want to know the why

New Project Goals

Reduce manual workload of client liaisons

Introduce more transparency into the preference system

Dashboard

Holistic Information Center

Is a new, but more convenient system better?

The food bank has many different touch points to achieve the same goal, this is an opportunity to create a “one-stop-shop” for both employees and agencies.

Will people actually use a new system?

It’s a must more difficult ask for people to switch to a new interface, so would updating produce requests be a great enough value proposition for people to switch to a desktop?

How mobile does this solution want to be?

This preserves the ability of agency partners to make produce adjustment requests independent of a Food Bank employee. However, it still does require them to be using a computer at the very least.

Low-Fi Prototyping

Testing familiarity vs holistic solution

Given the older age of some of the agency partners, we created to prototypes to gauge their comfortability with the new system. The first system we stuck with a phone-based interaction, the second we consolidated agency-facing information into a dashboard. A subgoal of this was to test whether agency partners would be comfortable with engaging with a computer rather than a person.

Chatbot

Phone-Based Interaction

Is familiarity better?

Lots of Agencies already call in their complaints, so this would preserve the same interaction

Are people OK with dealing with an digital agent?

Would agency partners be more comfortable talking to a computer rather than a person when making a complaint? What would it take for them to feel assured a digital agent will be able to take care of their needs in the same way?

Are people confident their request has been heard?

Would agency partners like the independence to complete tasks anywhere through the convenience of a phone call, or does the act of making produce adjustments need to feel more “weighty”

Research Metrics

Four pillars of success

In addition to the larger research questions above, we defined four metrics to determine more objectively if our prototype is moving us into the right direction

Transparency

Do agency partners feel assured their feedback is heard, and able to make more informed produce adjustment decisions?

Autonomy

Do agency partners feel empowered to make their own produce adjustments? Is this done in a way that streamlines the Food Bank’s processes?

Feedback

Do agency partners feel comfortable giving feedback, and the Food Bank feels the feedback is clear and actionable?

Efficiency

Does the process feel faster to complete than what existed before?

Transparency

Exacerbated

Although agency partners could now get more information, the fact that it was a robot and not a person made them question the legitimacy of it.

Autonomy

Improved

Agency partners could now make changes anytime, regardless of schedule.

Too many steps to make a simple change

Between each of the steps the agency partner needs to wait for confirmation before they can move to the next step.

Feedback

Improved

It was easy to make adjustments, and there would be text confirmations about the status of their feedback after their submission.

Unsure of task fulfillment

Because everything takes place through a text or voice platform, the lack of a visual confirmation made partner agencies unsure whether their changes actually went through.

Findings

How long a task takes matters more than when they take place

In the original model where partner agencies had to call the Food Bank within a designated window of time, meant that two people’s schedules needed to match up before a change could be made. Here we explored what happens when we remove the variable of another’s schedule, and be able to make changes any time.

Although this prototype sped up processes by reducing the need for the back and forth, felt longer than the previous process because of the pauses in the conversation while the bot was confirming things in the back end. We recognized here that time, or rather perceived time, is the most important factor for agency partners.

Assessment

Improved, but exacerbated time to complete task

We improved on two fronts: autonomy and feedback, but transparency was largely maintained/exacerbated. We also began to recognize that beyond these goals that we had, agency partners were much more concerned about another: Efficiency, or at the very least, the perception of it.

Prototype 1

ChatBot: Leveraging a more familiar system

Pros: The food bank already takes in requests via phone, this would have a lower barrier to learning and more approachable for less tech-savvy users,

Cons: Users can’t see the full picture of their preferences or feedback at once, and adjusting multiple preferences is cumbersome. People may be adverse to speaking to chat bot rather than person, especially when handling more novel requests.

Efficiency

Exacerbated

Although time to task completion is about the same, there is a perception that the process takes longer now because of more wait time.

Transparency

Improved

Agency partners now have multiple touchpoints to understand how their denotations come together.

Autonomy

Improved

Agency partners could now make changes anytime, regardless of schedule.

Feedback

Improved

There are trackers to see what stage their feedback has reached with the Food Bank.

Space to centralize all information

Rather than digging through email chains, agency partners expressed relief at being able to see all communication in one place. They processed one item at a time and did not express being overwhelmed by the quantity.

Need to surface key features

For most users they will not be browsing the dashboard to see the inventory status, they would only open the dashboard to fulfill one of three or four tasks. If new features interrupt the completion speed of these tasks, overall satisfaction will drop.

Findings

One central area for all information to live

Agencies found the information hierarchies and presentation of data to be helpful and clear, citing the current lack of data clarity. They did not seem to be overwhelmed with the information, processing items one at a time, presumably due to existing experience with the food bank and its systems.

The expected barrier of understanding for new and existing users seemed to be less significant than initially expected.

Prototype 2 Metrics

Improved, but needs greater efficiency

We improved on all fronts that we had originally set, so we decided to move forward with this prototype. This prototype allowed for clearer navigation, better visibility into key data, and a more consistent user experience within the same platform the Food Bank already uses. However we realized through this stage of user testing that “efficiency” matters the most to agency partners so we still needed to explore solutions to improve that front.

We also needed to be cognizant of the key value proposition of this dashboard, so that this does not become yet another platform that agency partners have to use to communicate with the Food Bank.

Prototype 2

Dashboard: One stop shop for all food bank interactions

Pros: Necessary information and data visualizations visible at once, visual controls are more intuitive, and can be built through Salesforce

Cons: Will require on-boarding, new agencies may find information density intimidating, and if the Food Bank is not able to connect it with their current platform then it further disconnects and becomes yet another platform the Food Bank operates from.

Efficiency

Maintained

Time to completion is about the same, to encourage use of this platform efficiency will be our greatest value proposition.

Dashboard

Improved, but needs greater efficiency

Mid-Fi Prototyping

Moving forward with the dashboard: Maximize efficiency and transparency

To get buy-in from the Food Bank and the Agency Partners, we knew the system needed to be more efficient than what they are using now. Additionally we needed to balance between the Food Bank and Agency Partners to figure out how to best increase transparency throughout the processes

Chatbot

Improved, but exacerbated time to complete task

Is familiarity better? Slightly Liked

Lots of Agencies already call in their complaints, so they were quick to pick up how the system works

Are people OK with dealing with an digital agent?Strongly Disliked

It was not necessarily talking with the AI agent that was strongly disliked, but the natural limitations that comes with talking to a computer. Partners felt it would have been easier to talk to a person to get the task done.

Are people confident their request has been heard? No

Although it was noted that it was nice to not have to depend on another’s schedule to get something done, efficiency of task completion ended up having a higher correlation to satisfaction than when the task happens.

Efficiency

Exacerbated

Transparency

Exacerbated

Autonomy

Improved

Feedback

Improved

Is a new, but more convenient system better? Liked

The agency partners expressed appreciation in seeing features such as feedback and previous denotations are all centralized in one location, promoting both autonomy and convenience.

Will people actually use a new system? Needs more assessment

While agency partners express “liking” some features we need more time to assess what are the key features that will convince agencies to switch over to the dashboard.

How mobile does solution want to be? This is good

This factor seems more like a nice to have. In part due to the greater efficiency for task completion in this prototype there was also greater satisfaction with the ability to make changes anytime.

Efficiency

Maintained

Transparency

Improved

Autonomy

Improved

Feedback

Improved

Design Iterations

Streamlining processes at Pittsburgh COmmunity Food Bank