Comidas For Familias + UserTesting

Challenges

Comida For Familias is a nonprofit dedicated to using technology to provide homeless populations with access to food and essential resources. The organization’s main focuses are redistributing food and providing homeless individuals with a way to find shelter in safe and uncrowded areas.

The nonprofit was inspired to embark on its latest ventures after collaborating with an organization called First They Came for the Homeless — a group that works to protect homeless encampments in Berkeley, CA. Through this collaboration, Comida For Familias’ CEO Antonio Mendieta and his colleague Cecilia Sarata learned that one of the services being provided to the homeless population in Berkeley, CA was extra food that was redistributed from local restaurants such as Dominos.

Antonio mentioned that Casey, one of the groups’ leaders, brought up the idea of creating an app that would make it easy for restaurants to distribute leftover food at safe dropoff locations. “Comida For Familias decided to run with this idea and begin developing an app to deliver food to safe zones for people in need,” said Antonio. At the same time that the organization began developing this project, two of Comida For Familia’s volunteers, Prerna Bhardwaj and Chen Wei, began working on another app called Ample. The purpose of this app was to help homeless individuals easily identify safe and uncrowded areas that they can visit.

Solution

Comida for Familias is currently leveraging UserTesting to test these two projects among homeless individuals and restaurant owners in the community. The company is focused on testing design, usability, and overall value.

“We are currently testing whether the interface is easy to use and visually appealing to ensure that our final product is something that will serve community members for a long time.” To gather the information they need, Comida For Familias surveys users as they navigate the app to learn what they think about the service being provided and the overall effectiveness and ease of use of the app.

Results

While Comida for Familias’ team is still in the process of developing their two projects, UserTesting has been extremely valuable in helping them hit the ground running.

Antonio notes that UserTesting has allowed the organization to connect with their target audience, cut back on time spent conducting in-person interviews, and access to more detailed information. “UserTesting has helped the development of our new apps tremendously by providing us a way to easily find testers, conduct studies, and share results.”