CATEGORY
Service Design, Design Strategy, UI/UX
Accenture Song, Royal College of Art
PARTNER
Service Design, Design Research, Strategy Planning, UI Design
MY ROLE
Fueling Connections:
Redefining Remote Dining for Community.
MISSION
Mealmate
Work-Life Balance is Under Threat.
Balancing work and life is essential, and this holds even more significance in today's world, with working from home or adopting hybrid work models becoming a megatrend across the UK and the globe. Work-Life Balance is the lens through which individuals strive to harmonize their professional and personal spheres.
However, work-life balance is under threat. Nowadays, it is often regarded as an allocation of time, akin to meetings, tasks, and personal time. Regrettably, in our fast-paced lives, it's often work-life balance that gets reduced or eliminated altogether.
Background
Mentoring and Guidance:
It can be an opportunity for more experienced colleagues to provide guidance and mentorship to junior staff.
Water Cooler Moments?
Stress Relief:
It provides a brief but important escape from work-related stress. They offer a chance to unwind and relax for a moment, reducing tension.
72%
of Gen Z agree what they eat and drink at work directly impacts their productivity
Gen Z snack averaging times per day, often replacing a main meal, more than any other demographic.
3
62%
of hybrid workers admit regularly eating indulgent foods during their working day.
Desk Research
Target Users: Understanding what are young hybrid professionals struggling with.
Young Professionals Missing Out on 'Water Cooler' Moments
Amid the era of remote and hybrid work, the absence of spontaneous office interactions is straining social connections. Especially young professionals aged 16-29, who have yet to experience traditional office life due to the pandemic, encounter hurdles when navigating hybrid work mode.
Why young professionals?
Balancing Meals and Work: A Time Challenge.
Hybrid work has disrupted dietary routines, particularly for young workers living alone. Unlike their counterparts with families, they often resort to fast food, home delivery, or frequent snacking while working from home. Striking a balance between work and nutrition has become a pressing concern.
What are they struggling with?
User Research
Opportunity Analysis
Value Driver Analysis
Target Users Interview
The power of neighbourhood?
Human-centred, collaborative urban communities are being valued and explored worldwide
Self-help Groups,
New York
15-minute City, Paris
Neighbourhood canteen, Shanghai
Changes in the Life Pattern
As the centre of daily life for young professionals moving from companies to local neighbourhoods, the trend of localised life is going on rise.
Target Users: Understanding what young hybrid professionals want and what has changed around them.
Conclusion
Therefore, we believe:
With aspirations for a high-quality social and physical lifestyle, young professionals can be a key resource to build a more closely connected and human-centred community.
In the meantime, local communities can play a supportive role in their re-defining of social life and personal wellbeing.
For the growing young WFH population:
Provide WFH young professionals with social and physical wellbeing.
Create new social life opportunities that prevent them from skipping meals or eating unhealthy.
For local communities exploring new ways of co-creation:
Provide Communities with mutual support and sense of belonging
Probe and nurture nearby passionate cooks and food stories that fuel the co-creation of local communities
'How Might We' Statement
How might we create a platform that explore a new relationship connected by food in local neighbourhoods?
Solution
Concept
Mealmate is a neighbourhood-focused meal-sharing platform designed to address the dietary and social needs of young professionals. It aims to prevent them from skipping meals or making unhealthy food choices by connecting them with passionate local cooks and fostering community engagement. Mealmate not only promotes social and physical well-being for work-from-home professionals but also encourages mutual support and a sense of belonging within local communities.
Strategy & Scenario Planning
Empowerment
STAGE 3
STAGE 2
Interaction
STAGE 1
Awareness
How might we let WFH control the time and reasonable meals?
Discover and Interact
The neighbours are renowned for their cooking, how might we let more people get more praise and confidence?
How might we can neighbors with frequent interaction naturally form long-term meal-sharing relationships?
Share a conversation, then food
Could closer communities be a place to share cooking skills, food, and even life?
Build trust and co-creation
Customer Journey Map
Awareness
Interaction
Empowerment
System Diagram
How Mealmate Works Within The System?
Service
STAGE 3
Empowerment: Community co-creation
Discover active users.
Bring in food co-creation opportunity
1.
Food culture exploration with others
2.
Share cooking skills through workshops
3.
Bring in sustainable food produces and concepts
Delivery Safety
1. Explore the level of information transparency and security from both sides of the user.
2. Make UX strategy to bring a friendly and collaborative meal delivery experience.
STAGE 2
Actualise interactions.
Make trust ‘asset’
1. Build ‘virtual dining space’ to create the atmosphere of ‘eating together
2. Make history assets between users and make the building of trust tangible.
Interaction: Share meals with others
STAGE 1
Awareness: Discover cookers nearby
Events
User’s story
Cook’s post
Dining Table
Build trust through low-cost interaction
Emphasis on the scale of ‘Nearby’
User Interface
Prototype
After mapping the service system, we visited the community and showed our ideas to evaluate, test, and obtain feedback on service system processes and hypotheses.
" I think this is a really good idea. Everyone in our community can contribute to and benefit from a community-shared database of food culture stories, which I think can help us understand our local communities better."
- feedback from Kevin, resident from Limehouse
