FEED: Blog post 1
‘FEED. The food app that feeds everyone.’
Initial ideas:
We were given the task to design and develop a prototype, as well as explore areas of data, business, accessibility, and surveillance within our app and its functions. Our initial ideas for our app surrounded food delivery and consumption, given the current climate of Covid-19 and the contactless lifestyle that surrounds us, having the convenience of everything all in one space makes the idea viable.
The original idea for FEED encompassed a platform where users can book restaurants, order, and pay for food all in one user-friendly, contactless place. With QR scanners for menus and an extensive list of menus within the app, allowing customers the ease of transactions and use, for both an in-house experience and delivery to your door. However, after analysing the competing food app market such as Deliveroo, Just Eat and Uber Eats we soon realised that these existing players took up too much of the market for us to just make another version of this. Therefore, we needed to develop our idea further…
Phase 2: The prototype.
Rather than throw our ideas away and start from scratch, we decided to approach the app from another angle, what needs development and help within the food industry and the world right now? Starving people and children. This is an issue currently highlighted in the news, such as Marcus Rashford helping to end child food poverty by funding free school meals for children over the summer holidays (BBC, 2020). This is just a drop in the ocean of the current starvation issues at hand in the UK alone. This then inspired us to develop our app further, to not only feed those using the app but those who need help most.
The existing functions of ordering and purchasing food all in one space remain the same. The extensions we added to the app included:
1. ‘Data Donation Optimisation’ – A function where users consent to give data to be further generated into money, the more data donated the more meals provided for those in need. As a company, we wanted to be open and transparent (like Ecosia) with our users about the data in which we collected.
2. Client Customer Surveys- Ultimately, Food companies, restaurants, delivery services, etc. pay to host unique surveys on the app for users to answer, thus giving them unique detailed data. The money further generated from this goes to food poverty charities. The incentive behind these surveys offers customers 20% off their next order, or the option to donate a meal.
3. Reward scheme- The more meals bought through the app the more the customers can generate those purchases into discounts or donations.
Market research:
Following this, we began by looking at the target audience for our app. After research, it became apparent that the main users of food apps were those of “low income and of young age” with 63% of those aged 18-29 years have used a multi-restaurant delivery website or app service in the past 90 days (Aric Zion, Thomas Hollmann, 2020). This finding was a positive one, as research has shown that younger users are more egalitarian and liberal, thus meaning our app is likely to be a success from the perspective of food donation. Due to the attitudes of young people drawn from studies, it is likely they will donate more meals to those in need.
Furthermore, we wanted to explore platforms that had an ethical stance, one that immediately came to mind was Ecosia. Ecosia’s browser works from the simple basis that for every 45 searches they will plant a tree (Ecosia, 2020). Another area that is admirable about Ecosia is their transparency with their costs and data usage, by being clear with users about where all profits go and how their data is farmed allows users to feel more comfortable in this aspect. This is something we wanted to transfer within our own app, which is clear within our Data Donation settings. (Read more about data in my critical analysis here.)
Tetrad:
We used McLuhan’s Tetrad to keep on track within the development phase of our app. Allowing us to evaluate key strengths and identify issues we may face when presenting the app.
FEED enhances the ability to donate meals to those in need without having to physically “give” money, whilst gaining something in return, the convenience of giving. It retrieves the sharing of food with others which the pandemic currently does not allow. This obsolesces the ethically viable alternative to takeaway and delivery, that currently follow hyper-aggressive capitalist models. FEED’s reverse could be the upsurge of platforms that follow this model disingenuously and claim to be donating to charities when they are in fact taking profits for themselves.
Follow this link to see Sam’s blog discussing everything Data, business, and the future of FEED.
Blog post 2 HERE
Blog post 3 HERE
References:
A, Zion. T, Hollmann., 2020. Food Delivery Apps: Usage and Demographics- Winners, Losers and Laggards. Retrieved from https://www.zionandzion.com/research/food-delivery-apps
BBC, 2020. Free school meals: Marcus Rashford given City of Manchester Award. Retrieved from https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-manchester-54717525
Ecosia, 2020. Financial Reports 2020. Retrieved from https://blog.ecosia.org/ecosia-financial-reports-tree-planting-receipts/