United Nations WFP

Beneficiaries Registration & Retailers Assessment

The World Food Programme is the food assistance branch of the United Nations and is the world’s largest humanitarian organization, addressing the 842 million people in the world without enough food to eat. 

WFP reaches more than 90 million people with food assistance in 80 countries each year. It delivers hundreds of thousands of tons of food each year, but expects almost a third of its assistance programs to be delivered in the form of cash, vouchers and new kinds of ‘digital food’ by 2015, helping communities in need to become more self sufficient.

My contribution

This is one of my top favourite projects and I consider myself lucky to have the opportunity to work with an inspiring team like WFP, on such a great cause and is such scale. It was my second project after being hired at Tigerspike.

I was the responsible for the UX/UI design as member of a small team of three (a project manager, an analyst and myself) that flew to Rome for a three-days set of workshops for two main projects. The overal project team of course was bigger including one desiginer, software engineers and QA.

The customer was happy with our work and although I moved on to another project after the first couple of releases, the awesome team of Tigerspike kept on working with WFP delivering a succesful outcome. Read more at the end of this case study.

Context

In order to distribute food assistance to people in need, the WFP must register personal information and some biometrics, such as facial geometry and fingerprints, which can then be used throughout the individual's lifecycle of interactions with the WFP to verify their identity and allocate aid.

Tigerspike worked with WFP to recommend innovative ways to make both its registration and distribution processes faster and more secure in often remote and harsh environments, through mobile phones, smart cards, and e-vouchers delivered by text messaging. Using their methodology, which combines technology and design expertise, Tigerspike used rapid prototyping to develop a flexible and scalable multi-device strategy for WFP.

Challenge

Working in a rapid style meant that multiple streams of work could be started across the world, to create efficiencies and deliver a solution in 72 hours.

This addressed a range of areas including device strategy, data management, record management, use of peripherals for photo capture, biometrics and barcodes or tokens; as well as costs, security issues around both physical security and data security; and battery life concerns.

Approach

Both the retailer assessment and beneficiary registration processes are complex and must adhere to international regulations. Tigerspike used our Discovery Process to understand the processes and then distil them down into the key steps to be carried out on mobile.

We worked with departments across the WFP who do not often work together and helped to negotiate a revised process suitable for mobile that satisfied all the criteria, including legal and regulatory.

Following the creation of the prototypes for both processes Tigerspike were involved in a simulation in Kenya where the retailer assessment prototype was successfully tested.

Outcome

The World Food Programme were very impressed with the alignment that our process brought to the project. It was an ambitious initiative that required change to be accepted across multiple departments and delivering this process was an achievement in itself.

The prototype testing for the Retailer application was very successful and the application has now been deployed to the field. The Beneficiary application will be completed soon. Both apps will help people in need during crises get their provisions safely and more quickly.