Expanding the Reach of Kindness

Their mission is to feed families, spread kindness, and strengthen communities - not only to help address the incredible rise in food insecurity among families but also to provide a simple act of love and kindness during a time full of uncertainty and stress.

We became aware of Lasagna Love through a member of the Yeti team who had been volunteering for the organization by cooking and delivering meals to those in need. In looking at their processes, we immediately recognized that a dedicated Lasagna Love app would help the organization reach thousands more individuals in need - while making the volunteer process much more accessible.

To help Lasagna Love broaden their reach, our team designed the official Lasagna Love App 100% pro bono. Additionally, to help ensure that their app development process goes smoothly, we worked together to create a product roadmap outlining each of their requirements including their projected scope and cost, to be shared with their development team.

Problem

For the past few years, Lasagna Love has been managing its volunteers through a clunky web portal which, among other things, allows volunteers to be matched with an individual or family in need of kindness. Recently, LL’s leadership team realized that the organization was losing volunteers due to the confusing and difficult to navigate volunteer portal
process.

Additionally, the Lasagna Love team had created a blueprint for expanding their reach by broadening the volunteer services they provide - however, the current web portal is ill-equipped to handle any expansion, stalling their progress until they are able to fund a new application.

Solution

We designed the new, UX friendly, ADA compliant Lasagna Love app, at absolutely no cost to the organization. To ensure the designs were exactly what LL wanted and needed, we organized several workshops that allowed our teams to drill down into the organization's current and future requirements, and to understand what is and isn’t currently working for the organization.

From here, we created a list of “must have” features that would be included in this first version of the app and noted all of the future features that the Lasagna Love team would like to have in later versions. We then created low-fidelity wireframes that we shared with the LL team, to ensure we were on the right track. Once approved, we moved on to the final, high-fidelity designs.

The first version of the Lasagna Love App will allow volunteers to quickly sign up as a volunteer and set parameters for their volunteerism, including how often they can cook/deliver, the mileage they are willing to travel, the dietary preferences they are comfortable cooking for (vegan, gluten free, allergens etc) and their communication preferences (phone, email, text etc).

Users are then taken through an onboarding process that utilizes embedded videos to share important information with volunteers, such as Lasagna Love’s core values and critical food safety information.

Once the user has been onboarded, they will be able to access the volunteer portal. Here, users will find all of the pertinent information on their matches (the people they will be delivering a meal to), including contact information, allergies, preferences and more. Additionally, this screen provides users with resources, such as recipes and other tips, information on other ways to help, and more.

Within the app, users will receive a pop-up notification each time they receive a new “match”. These matches will also be visible on the “match” screen, where users can manage their deliveries and provide status updates for their regional leaders review (scheduled delivery, delivered etc).

Outcome

We’ve completed V1 of the Lasagna Love App designs, and are excited to continue working with the Lasagna Love team! We are currently working on a product roadmap that the LL team will be utilizing to ensure that their development team stays on track and on budget, and that will additionally help with their fundraising efforts!