Modernizing Council on Aging’s Home Delivered Meals (HDM) for Older Adults
Time Frame: May - July 2022
Service Design
Program Strategy
Overview
The growing 60-plus population, coupled with the pandemic, inflation, and competition in meal and grocery delivery, has prompted the Council on Aging (COA) to rethink their strategy to better meet client needs.
The Live Well Team developed a program that meets the needs of older adults, COA staff, and service providers. In addition to the program, the team created tools to help COA understand their clients and customize each program to individual needs.
“They’re like angels bringing us food. without them we’d be starving” - Older Adult
My Role: UX Project Lead Create Research Plan Conduct Interviews Create Visualizations
Skills: Field study & interviews Card Sorting Journey + service mapping Persona Development Implementation strategy
My Team: Graduate Design Research Fellow Design Researcher Communication Design Co-op
CHALLENGE
How can COA maintain its competitiveness in a volatile market while effectively serving a growing population of older adults, without depending on fluctuating federal funding?
SOLUTION
We discovered that engaging older adults with their local community is key to success. Therefore, we developed a new program with COA as the liaison to provide holistic support for older adults through community involvement.
Research Process
The team first gained functional literacy by interviewing older adults, service providers, and council on aging to understand their needs
Phase 1: Secondary Research
Understanding the Organization and Their Competitors
To modernize the HDM program, we need to understand the current and future landscape of meal delivery programs.
Analyzed 41 documents that includes HDM program, requirements, and funding to understand design constraints.
Our secondary research highlighted the importance of staying current with competitors to meet the evolving expectations and needs of clients. By supporting COA with their requirements and enhancing their services, we can ensure they remain competitive and continue to deliver exceptional value.
Phase 1: Primay Research
Exploring the HDM Program: Stakeholder Needs, Challenges, and Opportunity Areas
We observed and interviewed COA staff, older adults, and service providers to understand the HDM service system.
The team interviewed 27 stakeholders: 6 COA staff, 10 service providers, and 11 older adults. Each interview lasted 30-60 minutes. Additionally, the team observed Meals on Wheels operations from food production to delivery.
Created three interview guides (COA staff, older adults, and service providers)
Conducted non-participatory observation to capture service operations to delivery.
Analyzing the data through synthesis and in-depth examination to uncover underlying needs.
Our aim is to gather information to understand the service system, uncover various needs and challenges, and identify key opportunity areas to focus on.
Presenting a snapshot of our findings to guide COA's focus areas
Through comprehensive primary research, our team developed a service systems map and personas to identifying client needs, challenges and opportunity areas for the COA team to review.
Understanding biggest challenges across all three stakeholders and identify areas of opportunity.
Understanding the Older Adults COA are serving and their different needs
Phase 1: Key Insights
Opportunity Areas to Focus On
From the research, the team synthesized several key insights: COA needs to empower older adults and provide holistic support to address their evolving needs. Additionally, COA must remain agile to adapt to these changing needs and respond to increasing competition.
Phase 2: Ideation
Ideation and Co-Creation Activities
The team initiated idea generation based on identified opportunities and collaborated with COA to prioritize them.
The team initiated a brain-writing session that generated 52 idea themes across seven areas of the HDM services. Additionally, we brainstormed service ideas tailored to each persona. From there, we refined our ideas by grouping them and assessing their feasibility.
Phase 2: Validation
Engaging Older Adults for Feedback
To validate the ideas, the team revisited older adults in diverse situations to gauge their interest on the concepts.
10 older adults were interviewed to expand upon and validate the team's ideas. Additionally, we surveyed older adults with varying abilities to gather their feedback on the concepts developed.
From our interviews, it became evident that providing services tailored to each older adult's unique needs is essential. There was a strong emphasis on the importance of personalization, ensuring that services are not only relevant but also effective in meeting individual requirements and preferences.
Phase 3: Refinement
Implementation Strategy
We wanted to show the diverse and unique needs of older adults by using persona scenarios to provide clarity and insight.
We utilized personas representing the older adults we interviewed to identify potential personalized services that COA can offer them. This approach helped the team understand how specific services can meet the diverse needs of older adults.
Integration of the new service, Meals and More into the current Home Delivered Meals Program
It is crucial to integrate this program smoothly into the existing system without disrupting current workflow. Therefore, we seamlessly embedded the new service system within the current HDM program.
Phase 3: Implementation
Where is it Now?
Strategy to Implement the Meals and More program starting from a meal summit with all stakeholders
With the new Meals and More program suggested by the Live Well Team, the COA team began by sharing research and service ideas at a meal summit hosted by COA, attended by meal providers, partners, and older adult representatives.
After the meal summit, they started gradually incorporating meal and service suggestions to their current Home Delivered and Congregate Meal Programs.
Reflection
Project Learnings
This was my first time leading a project. I learned so much about the importance of leveraging my team member's strengths!
Adapting to New Responsibilities: Leading a project for the first time required adjusting to new responsibilities and decision-making processes, highlighting the need for collaboration and task management based on each person's strengths. We learned to rely on each other to collaborate effectively, fostering mutual support and teamwork to achieve project objectives.
Exploring the Aging Population Space: We leveraged articles, advisor insights, OLLI participation, aging simulations, and internal knowledge to understand the aging population space.
Overcoming Recruitment Difficulties: Recruiting older adults was challenging, so we restructured our time allocation and used alternative strategies like flyer creation and COA outreach events.
Managing Program Complexity and Funding Constraints: We managed program complexity and funding constraints by assigning roles, designating experts for specific areas, and emphasizing teamwork and knowledge-sharing.
