Service Design for Mather Community Initiatives
How might we enable older adults to enjoy food and conversation together in-person and enhance this experience with a lifelong learning component?
Skills Used
The Problem
Mather, a senior life plan retirement community with locations across the country, faced pandemic related challenges like so many others in 2020. One of their largest challenges - deciding to abruptly close down all Mather’s cafe’s, food and Internet cafes for customers of any age, but specifically for older adults to connect with others and have access to a variety of technologies. This pandemic necessitated situation pulled apart communities in a sudden way. With this problem at hand, my team was tasked with developing a service that brings forth new opportunities for older adults to connect over food and conversation as we start to enter a post-pandemic world.
User Research
To begin our research, we started with creation of ecology and stakeholder maps to better understand the user at hand. With the stakeholder map we mapped out the relationships between different parties in our ecosystem and placed a specific focus on the benefits of the primary user. The ecology map was used to conduct research into questions of where the services in this segment are being used, why they are being used, when they are being used, how they are being used, and who is using them. This map helped us learn the expansiveness who would be involved within this service and platforms, as well as gauge a better understanding of our users roles in order to develop our discussion guide. We conducted 6 user interviews with older adults to learn about their interests, current pain points and struggles, and the past services they have taken part in to engage with their community.
Ecology Map
Concept Development and Ideation
This POV was used to guide the creation of three design directions that we presented to Mather at our midpoint check in. The first service directions involved a recipe exchange to promote sharing recipes with other participants. The second direction involves a food festival structure that will promote a more exciting and engaging environment for adults. Lastly, the cooking show direction highlights learning about the creation of a meal by watching a professional, and then engaging in an attempt to create the meal at home after. In presenting to our client, we got abundant feedback on points of interest and areas of concern. These points focused on issues of how this information would reach consumers and being more intentional in developing interactions through our service. This discussion led us to make the decision to focus in on the recipe exchange as our service of choice to further develop upon.
Through user interviews and journey mapping, we uncovered the insights seen to the left. Ultimately, we developed a final point of view (POV) to use moving forward. The POV was: Older adults who are interested in expanding their social network through community engagement need a service that promotes learning, sharing, and personal growth because of the social isolation and loneliness resulting in mental health concerns induced by the pandemic.
Final Solution
Feedback from Mather in focusing on the recipe exchange surrounded the need to get a clearer understanding of how participants could stay connected at the conclusion of the service, how participants that did not want to participate in person could be tied in, and how this service could be scaled so as to be held at different magnitudes.
Ultimately, this feedback generated our final concept: A service that allows for older adults to come together, listen to a local restaurant owner’s story, share a recipe they brought, and continue to connect with participants post-event via an online web-forum where the recipes are shared and users can choose new ones to make and leave comments for the author. After coming up with the final service it was important that we solidified the idea out by creating a comprehensive journey map and service blueprint.
Wireframe Development
We created an interactive wireframe mock up to showcase how Mather can utilize this platform to increase engagement after the conclusion of the service event. Users will be able to create a log in, upload their own recipe that they brought to the event, and also see other participants recipes. Users can then favorite recipes they wish to make later on, and even leave comments and upload photos of the finished product. Furthermore, we see this platform as being a stepping stone Mather can use to integrate their different services onto one shared platforms for users to interact with and create a community
My Contributions
I took point in setting up initial user interviews to understand older adults pain points and frustrations, as well as conducted 2 of the 6 interviews myself. I chose a variety of individuals who had both taken part in Mather events, and had not. I also developed the food festival idea and storyboard that were presented within our Midterm presentations to the client. Finally, I took the lead in developing our Food for Thought user’s journey and created a video to showcase to our clients what using this service might look like to the consumer.
Potential Impact and Future Goals
Prior to closure, Mather’s cafe’s were serving between 6,000 and 12,000 individuals each day and has been replicated by more than 40 other providers. With Food for Thought being a hybrid event, we hope to see this service grow beyond the Chicago area once it is running and begin to access larger communities of older adults, ultimately reaching over 100,000 individuals per year
My team is excited to share our final deliverables with Mather at the end of March and I look forward to updating this page with their final feedback and next steps.