Reimagining the School Lunch Nutritious Meal Program
To Improve Efficiency and Enhance the Service Experience For Diverse Stakeholders
Project Overview
The National School Lunch Program (NSLP) is a federally assisted meal program operating in public and non-proft private schools and residential child care institutions. It provides nutritionally balanced, low-cost or no-cost lunches to children each school day. The project aims to identify challenges in the school nutritious meal program and propose amendments to enhance the service ecosystem as a whole.
Team Member: Sagarika Konanuru
Project Duration: 6 Weeks
My Role
-
Conducted stakeholder interviews, to identify pain-points in the service ecosystem and facilitate insightful design decision-making.
​
-
Collaborated with my fellow team member to develop strategies and design concepts to cater to the needs of diverse stakeholders.
​
-
Collaboratively conducted user testing and designed the story board, service blueprint, and design prototypes, for the reimagined service concept.
The
Opportunity
“School meal programs are at a tipping point as rising costs, persistent supply chain issues and labor shortages jeopardise their long-term sustainability.”
- School Nutrition Association President Lori Adkins
Public schools across the United States offer school lunch meal programs; however, very few students actually participate in this program due to a variety of challenges and constraints leading to additional problems of excessive food waste and management. There is a rising need to reimagine and restructure the service ecosystem in a way that satisfies the very unique needs of all the diverse stakeholders.
Project
Objectives
01.
Propose a meal service that is healthy and exciting for children, reassuring for parents and efficient and easy to implement for the school.
02.
Understand the challenges of the existing service and provide solutions that are universally accessible and sustainable over the long run.
The Solution
The solution focussed on reimagining the school lunch service by designing new touch points and enhancing existing ones to provide a seamless experience for stakeholders across the ecosystem.
Design Process
The project followed a design sprint approach to ensure scope for design validation and re-iteration. This user-centred process facilitated greater empathy of our users and stakeholders needs and enabled design solutions that effectively satisfied user needs.
2 Weeks
2 weeks
2 weeks
SPRINT 1
Secondary Research
Service Blueprint
System Mapping & Analysis
Design Concept & Solutions
SPRINT 2
Stakeholder Interviews
Affinity Mapping
Redefining Design Solutions
User Testing
SPRINT 3
Redefining Service Blueprint
Redesigning Touchpoints
Refining Final Prototypes
User Testing
Secondary Research
What are the limitations and challenges of the current service?
Today, fewer and fewer students opt for school lunch meal programs, with the numbers decreasing every year.
Among programs that now charge for meals, Average Daily Participation (ADP) dropped by 23.1% for breakfast and 13.2% for lunch.
(average difference comparing Oct. 2022 and Oct. 2021 ADP). -Based on survey by the School Nutrition Association
Based on Fall 2022’s Supply Chain Survey from the School Nutrition Association (SNA)
98%
School meal programs struggled with product shortages
95%
School meal programs struggled with labor shortages
97%
School meal programs struggled with rising costs
Mapping the Existing System
We created a system map to ensure we accounted for all the touchpoints and stakeholders involved at different stages (pre-service, front stage, back stage, post-service) of the service ecosystem.
Stakeholder Research
Identifying our key stakeholders
PRIMARY STAKEHOLDERS
Students
Parents
Lunch Staff
Chefs
Teachers
SECONDARY STAKEHOLDERS
Government
Nutritionists
Farmers
Waste Management
Delivery Workers
Stakeholder Interviews
Empathising with our stakeholders challenges
04
Stakeholders Interviewed
01
01
Teacher
02
Parents
Board Member
We interviewed diverse stakeholders to ensure we understand the needs and limitations of the stakeholders across various touchpoints of the service ecosystem.
The interviews were analysed through Affinity Mapping to gather actionable insights and identify scope for design intervention.
Key Insights
01
Inefficient school lunch system drastically impacts the overall experience.
Students want more time to enjoy lunch with their friends. Additionally, there is no channel for students/ parents to provide feedback on the lunch, limiting scope for improvement.
“ Students wait in line so long for food that they don’t get to really enjoy their lunch time.” - Board Member
02
Concerns surrounding the nutritive value of school lunch meals.
Parents want the meals provided in school to be healthier and have higher nutritive value.
They want their child to develop a healthy relationship with food.
“ Would like the kids to learn to be intentional in food, healthier habits. We want kids to be in love with food beyond appetite” - Parent
03
There is tremendous pressure on the school staff which eventually causes gaps in the system.
It is extremely challenging for the school to keep track of every students allergy and dietary needs which leads to a large volume of food being wasted regularly. Furthermore, the lunch staff is constantly rushed and burdened during the lunch hour.
“ Its hard to know how much food kids want on a day to day basis as it depends whats on the meal and how much kids are willing to eat. Its hard to get the volume of stuff.”
- Board Member
04
Parents/ guardians want to be involved in the school lunch system.
Parents want to be updated on their kids nutrition and food consumption. There are however limited opportunities for parents to volunteer and be more involved
“ I would like the convenience of knowing what my child got for lunch and booking it ahead of time .” - Parent
Designing Solutions
Improving the service experience across diverse touchpoints
Problem 1
How might we help the school keep track of students dietary needs without any additional burden?
Proposed Solution
A Single Source of Truth
that keeps parents informed about their child’s meals without additional burden to the lunch staff and students.
Problem 2
How might we help students get students more involved in their health & the lunch service?
Proposed Solution
Holistic Engagement
that helps students develop a healthy relationship with food and enhances their understanding of food disposal.
Problem 3
How might we help the school efficiently execute the lunch service & reduce food waste?
Proposed Solution
Increasing Efficiency
to allow students to enjoy their lunch breaks and relieve some of the pressure on the lunch staff during the lunch service.
Design Solution 1
A Single Source of Truth
A one stop digital touchpoint where parents can effectively monitor, manage and provide feedback on their child’s meal preferences.
-
Parents and students can view and select their meals for the week which will significantly help the school reduce food waste .
-
Parents can update their child's allergy information and dietary preferences thus reducing the pressure on the school staff to monitor each student individually.
_gif.gif)
_gif.gif)
Design Solution 2
Holistic Engagement
A series of programs to help students develop a healthy relationship with food beyond just appetite.
-
Programs that are included in the schools curriculum promoting activities like gardening, visits to farmers markets, and composting.
-
Motivating parents to volunteer for this program will help them better connect with their child's education.
Design Solution 3
Increasing Efficiency
A streamlined lunch process that gives students the agency to select meals and reduces the pressure on lunch staff during the meal service.
Meals are served in color coded plates by dietary restrictions
Student visually selects meal and reads ingredient list, then taps their ID card at counter
Machine provides visual and audio output indicating if student may pick up meal based on their allergen information
Student then picks up meal and joins friends for lunch.
Parents learn what child picked up for lunch through portal.
_gif.gif)
User Journey Mapping
Visualising the redesigned school lunch process
.jpg)
Designing the New Service Blueprint
Redefining touchpoints in the service ecosystem
.jpg)
User Testing
Identifying gaps and limitations of the redesigned service
We conducted user testing at the end of each sprint to help us evaluate the feasibility of our proposed solutions. We reiterated on our solutions based on the feedback received at the end of each testing session.
User Testing - Roleplay Activity Scenario
Student: “It’s lunchtime! Imagine you’re a <dietary preference> middle school student who’s allergic to <allergen>.
Using your ID card to tap on the counters, pick up your lunch meal.”
Feedback:
Students found it really convenient to pick up their meals by themselves without having to wait in line.
Validation
Using the Google HEART Framework to evaluate proposed design solutions
