A service transformation project focused on improving how older adults access groceries, receive support, and maintain meaningful connections within their community.
Food2You helps older adults access groceries while providing something equally important: human connection. The project focused on understanding what made the service valuable, identifying operational friction points, and uncovering practical opportunities to improve volunteer recruitment, order management, and community engagement without increasing complexity or cost.
Conducted a service safari — observed the full delivery process in the field, from store to customer's door.
Synthesised observations into a problem map across all five service stages. Discovered how many issues were actually connected.
Split proposals by stage — Pre, During, and Post-Service — to ensure each intervention was focused and feasible.
Built quick, suggestive prototypes the client could react to, refine, and start using almost immediately.
A field observation exercise that followed the complete delivery journey, revealing the people, processes, and handoffs behind the service.
Taking Orders
Shopping in Store
Organising Deliveries
Preparing Orders
Loading the Vehicle
Delivering to Customers
Managing Returns
Recording Outcomes
Following the entire service journey helped uncover operational challenges, information gaps, and opportunities for improvement that would have been difficult to identify through interviews alone.
The research revealed that volunteer preparation, order management, delivery errors, and customer feedback were not independent challenges. They were all connected by one thing: information breakdowns between service stages. Mapping the entire journey exposed where these gaps occurred and how they affected both volunteers and customers.
"The real challenge wasn't the individual problems. It was the lack of connection between them."
Understanding these relationships shifted the focus from fixing isolated issues to improving the service as a whole.
Volunteers were showing up without knowing what to expect — visiting elderly customers, navigating unexpected emotional moments, and managing dietary complexity without adequate context. The proposal reframed the volunteer relationship from a transactional sign-up into a meaningful partnership, supported by a welcome email sequence and a guide that communicated the mission, set practical expectations, and gave volunteers tools to feel psychologically ready.
Orders were being taken by phone and written by hand — then reinterpreted in a busy supermarket aisle. The proposal replaced this with two linked Google Sheets: a master route sheet containing all delivery data, with filters for frozen items and weekly history; and individual customer sheets giving volunteers a bio and order context before they even step through the door. The result was less repeat work, fewer errors, and more confidence in the aisle.
Once the shopping was unpacked and the volunteer left, the service went completely silent. Customers had no way to give feedback. Volunteers had no way of knowing whether their delivery made a difference. The proposal introduced a simple post-service touchpoint: a thank-you letter that personalised the relationship, a short feedback form that gave customers a voice, and a community survey that surfaced the real value of the service back to those delivering it.
It is such a great idea, I am just going to print this out and set it up after this call.AgeUK Lewisham Manager · Feedback during the design sprint presentation
An email sequence and guide that reframes the volunteer relationship — reducing anxiety, setting clear expectations, and communicating the mission before the first delivery even happens.
A master route sheet and customer-specific profiles in Google Sheets — replacing hand-written lists with structured, accessible data that any volunteer can read clearly in a busy supermarket.
A thank-you letter, feedback form, and community survey that close the gap between delivery and recognition — giving customers a voice and volunteers visibility into the value they create.
The AgeUK Lewisham manager confirmed during the presentation that the proposals were ready to use immediately — no development sprint, no procurement process, no months of sign-off.
This project reminded me that good design doesn't have to be complex. In community services especially, practical solutions that fit existing behaviours often create more impact than ambitious new systems.
One piece of feedback has stayed with me:
"I'm just going to print this out and set it up after this call."
A simple reminder that usefulness often matters more than novelty.
