Snapily

CalFresh participants face many obstacles when it comes to eating a healthy and nutritious diet. One of the biggest challenges they face is access to healthy food. These low-income residents often live in regions designated as “food deserts”, where there is no convenient access to fresh, healthy, and affordable food. Instead of grocery stores, these communities are served only by fast food restaurants and corner liquor stores. They also typically have less access to transportation and less time to travel outside of their community to shop for healthier options. Additionally, there are cultural, informational, and habitual barriers this population must overcome.

Food delivery services have the potential to address this problem of access (both time and geography) to healthy food. Unfortunately, there is a “delivery divide” that affects low-income populations, as current delivery services cater to more affluent communities. We see an opportunity to develop a food delivery service that focuses exclusively on CalFresh participants with the goal of inspiring and enabling healthier food habits.

Deliverables:

Our main focus for this project will be on discovering needs and user requirements as well as designing a user-centered interface. We envision the minimum viable product to be a high-fidelity prototype of a mobile application. To ensure the feasibility of this project, we will also need to design a system that addresses the logistical challenges inherent in our solution. These include payment processing, delivery methods, government incentive programs, and supply of goods.