Meals on Wheels Mobile Application
This was a project that was worked on during my Principles of Interaction course. The premise being that if I were a designer working for a local government agency, and were asked to provide an easy to use form that could be used in conjunction with the Meals on Wheels program, what would I do to provide the most well received option that could be used by many people.
With the main page of the application, I initially chose to keep the layout simple and easy to understand. The primary age of the intended user is above retirement age and commonly not very skilled with online items. This wireframe provides an easy option to begin a new form or check on the status of one that has already been submitted. The header will include the logo and a link to call on the device’s phone dialer to contact the program office with questions, applying a consistency across each step of the form.
Once the application steps have begun, a tracker is presented along the side of the form. With the use of increased size, and presence of a contrasting color, each step is highlighted to illustrate progress. This also introduces conditional fields, whereas the presence depends on the selection in a previous step. The exit capability is made present with a “Start Over” option at the bottom to return to the first step of a blank application. The logo at the top will also return the user to the main page.
This page highlights the effect of a completed section in the overall progress of the application versus current or incomplete sections. The area where information is intended to be gathered is also given a colorful background to draw attention to it as the primary point of focus.
This section focuses on the more sensitive content that is collected. To prevent human error mistakes, record falsification, and program adherence, the birthdate and social security numbers are requested. This is because many programs in different states only allow a recipient to participate in one program of this type. Some may try to gain membership into multiple for personal gain. Since most programs are funded through local, state, or federal agencies, this is watched pretty carefully by the offices that offer it.
This is another example of responsive enabling, which doesn’t just hide an entire area until an appropriate option is chosen, but now offers a different type of entry with the selection. In this case, if the user chooses “Yes” for the presence of an entry code or pets, an input section appears to present the numeric code or types of pets.
This section is where I had chosen to introduce more results from my interview done prior to designing the layout. What was discovered, was that the individuals who work in the social work areas do not often use the term “disabled” when referring to program participants. The negative connotations that are carried are found offensive to many people who need to become a recipient of these benefits temporarily but are not, by definition, disabled.
I’ve always been someone who gravitated to two major elements of design: minimalism and consistency. In this section, I highlighted the fact that I wanted to have multiple selection areas use check boxes and single selection areas use radio button. This remained the easiest to understand and correlates well with common elements in other areas of web and mobile design in the world today.
This is a straight-forward, simple, and easy to read output of all information collected throughout the application form. Given the limited size of the mobile browser, the arrow at the bottom can be pressed to move down one page length or the user can simply scroll down at their own pace. At this point, the user can either go back to correct any incomplete information, or click “Submit” to send the application to be reviewed by a case worker. As always, the “Start Over” button is providing the user one last option to back out entirely, which would release any collected information before it would be sent to anyone or stored anywhere.
This final page ties back in with the main page for the application where there were two options presented, one being the ability to check on the status of a previously submitted application. This would be done by entering the confirmation number as seen above. The same information would be sent to the user via email if one was provided earlier. The email would be optional, but the phone number would be mandatory, since the case worker will use that to contact the participant to review the information before placing a determination upon it.