Update on project activities:
To date, our team conducted its first SNAP Online Guide interview and we are in the final stages of securing our second interview. We are hoping, given the decision to utilize a notetaker, to open up the interview process to the broader group and achieve greater scheduling flexibility. The unBox team has also expressed an interest in participating, especially in the early stages of interviewing, in the hopes of course-correcting and adapting the interview process in real time based on preliminary feedback. Leading up to the interview, we received excellent and thorough feedback from unBox regarding the interview protocols and line of questioning. They have been extremely generous with their time and actively involved every step of the way. Last week we discussed and brainstormed through some of the tensions between securing interview data, and retaining its accessibility in order to compile and analyze our findings in a collaborative setting. We have determined to keep our documents in a “Google Drive” so long as they contain no indicators of interviewee identity. In terms of the interview document, the primary tension seems to lie in balancing a series of open-ended, food-security related questions that give context to the SNAP participants accessing the online shopping guide, as well as reserving time to troubleshoot our way through the set-up process and get the primary-target feedback that is for the OPP itself. We are currently considering the pros and cons of demographic questions and brief surveys to assess food security as defined by the USDA. That being said, following up with our unBox community partners after our first interview, we have decided to modify our interview questions slightly to expand the time dedicated to user feedback on the online guides. unBox has developed both an in-depth and flyer-style guide to participating in SNAP benefits through online shopping. It is our hope to expose our interviewee first to the denser guide, and later garner their feedback from the experience by having them also take a look at the flyer. We hope this will prompt the interviewee to highlight what is missing, and what is excessive in terms of guidance in the realm of online grocery shopping and EBT set-up. In other news, the unBox team has provided us with an interview sign-up resource. They will be forwarding this form to their own community partners and our team will continue to reach out based on our own contacts. In terms of BAC content creation, we are continuing to assist with data input and verification in the database for Public Free Food services in the Bay Area. We have also continued to check in with Charlie through Slack and Zoom, and we participated in a meeting where we discussed charting a roadmap for data entry. What we observed and learned: The first SNAP Online Guide interview was conducted Friday Oct. 16th over Zoom. We had one team member note-taking and one team member conversing with the interviewee using the SNAP interview questionnaire. The interviewee was extremely open and forthcoming--so much so that, at times, the interview questions that were meant to prompt, seemed to get in the way of an extant narrative. Circling back to the prescribed questions felt like cutting that narrative short and often, as though it was revealing assumptions of homogeneity built into the framework of questionnaire-based interviews. Secondarily, a good period of time is needed to walk through the online guide itself. We hit a roadblock at “step 1” due to what appears to have been a change in the online landscape of Amazon itself, at least for the interviewee. This, however, was an important insight that will lend itself to an easy opportunity for improved guide accessibility. It is the nature of retail websites to change, and the guide itself should account for and be able to adapt to this. Ultimately, the hour was up before we were able to set our interviewee up with their online EBT purchasing account and we ultimately extended the time in order to execute the set-up. As we verify data for the BAC database, we have continued to see the significant value bayareacommunity.org has for its residents. Since there has not been a centralized and comprehensive space containing all of the public free food services in the Bay Area, it can make information about these resources more difficult to locate. When this data is consolidated into a single database, we think it will allow for more accessible information for people in need. Critical analysis/Moving forward: The interview elicited a nuance that went unseen during the development process. The opening segment felt like a survey, the intermediate introduced more of a personal narrative-based structure, and a third process involved specific technical feedback. Each of these moved at a different pace and it was difficult, being in the interview, to step outside and analyze whether or not the process registered as a cohesive experience. When time ran out it felt extractive to stop the interview short of the point of completing what had felt like a soft guarantee to the interviewee. That is, setting up their online EBT payment method through the website. When we reached and passed the hour mark, and had not yet set up the interviewee’s EBT card, we asked the interviewee if they would like to continue and set up the EBT. The interviewee expressed a strong interest in continuing. We were ultimately able to set up the card, but would like to acknowledge the dual possibilities that the interviewee may have wanted to stay on the call to get their EBT set up, but also that they might have felt pressure to generate a “successful” experience for our team. Moving forward in the interview process it seems best to plan for this eventuality. For our next interview, we are prioritizing maintaining the hour time limit with potential follow up in case the interviewee expresses an interest in setting up the online EBT if we are not able to do so during the allotted time. Speaking with our community partners, Charlie and Isabel, we determined that the easiest way to move toward this goal is to allow more time allotted for user testing for the SNAP Online Guide by condensing preliminary questions, and taking out the unguided shopping portion in order to allow for more direct use of the SNAP Online Guide itself. Comments are closed.
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