Making Dinner Work

A Study in Feasibility and App Development

Written Compilation and Deliverable

By: Samir Goel, Emma Stegman, and Ziang Xu

Family Dinner Project Overview

The Family Dinner Project (FDP) is a non-profit organization that aims to assist families
in improving one of the most important components of family life: Family Dinner. FDP focuses
on the family dinner as it has a clear correlation with a healthier family dynamic. Overall, The
Family Dinner Projects aspires to create a more ethical and socially conscious society by
improving this critical feature of day-to-day life. Regular family dinners have been proven to
help improve happiness, success, and wellness and as such, are one of the key building blocks of
a healthy and ethical society.
Since its inception, The Family Dinner Project has expanded significantly through
building a powerful brand and through creating strategic partnerships. Today, The Family Dinner
Project wants to integrate their current successes and impact on a larger scale. The FDP team
determined that a mobile app would be the best way to expand their reach and retain users by
providing a unique product. The Family Dinner Project approached in the capacity of helping
them lay out a potential phone app so that they can execute on it sooner rather than later.
Our Process
In order to determine the key features and flow of the app it was important to maintain a
holistic approach to the process. With that, the first step was to immerse ourselves in the
organization itself to ensure we could accurately represent The Family Dinner Project and
understand their mission and goals. We spent the first two to three weeks of the project
familiarizing ourselves with FDP by scouring their website, any of their press releases and
publicity, and their internal documentation. After reaching a stage at which we felt we had
identified The Family Dinner Project's mission, key factors, success drivers, and culture we
prepared a brief executive summary for their review to ensure we had acquired a sufficient
understanding of the organization.
Before taking the next steps we realized we needed to determine whether a mobile app
would benefit The Family Dinner Project in meeting their immediate and long term goals. We
felt it was important to do our due diligence given how large of an expenditure developing an
app could be. After analyzing FDPs biggest needs and their market segment we came to the
conclusion that an app would be the best way to proceed. Our conversations with FDP along
with our analysis identified their primary needs were to increase engagement by developing new
tactics to motivate and inspire families and to create a stronger community among their users.
Another pressing concern was retaining individuals who only attended one-off community
dinners or were unwilling to commit to the 4 week FDP program. Given this background, we
concluded that an app would be an ideal step in bridging these gaps. We determined an app
would allow users to easily engage with a larger community and stay involved with FDP without
committing to extended usage. Furthermore, our preliminary research demonstrated that
comparable organizations to FDP did not have an app and thus developing the mobile app would
present FDP with the opportunity to further differentiate themselves. After determining that the
2

app would indeed benefit FDP and enable them to scale up their impact we proceeded to our next
step: an industry analysis.
This analysis involved researching a number of pre-existing mobile apps for
organizations with similar missions, values or functions to the Family Dinner Project. We began
by looking at FDPs main competitors and from there moved on to apps that had replicable
components for an FDP app. In particular, we examined a number of fitness, conversation starter,
family game and dinner oriented apps to look for best practices and ideas for the FDP app. After
conducting this analysis we presented FDP with a PowerPoint presentation which broke down
the various organizations and apps by strengths, weaknesses, key takeaways, and replicable
components.
At this point we had a good idea of what was available in the space which was quite
limited. Our analysis demonstrated the unique potential FDP has within the available space,
which gave us a significant amount of leeway and scope in designing the app. In order to better
understand the key features and goals for the app, we began a dialogue with a larger portion of
The Family Dinner Project Team. Through this conversation we understood the key components
of the app were to be: engaging users, providing easy access to information, and fostering a
community for FDP users. Collectively we realized it would be helpful to get input from the
families FDP supports. To do so, we created a survey which the FDP team published on their
blog with incentives to get their user base to add their input. We wanted to ask the questions that
would help us best identify how FDP families would use the app and how we could create value
for them. The key findings are as follows: more than 90% of the 50 respondents indicate strong
interest in having a platform on which they can easily share recipes, game ideas, and
conversation starters with other families. They also want to access different recipes, game ideas
and conversation starters themselves. Many of the respondents disagree with the use of
technology at the table. The survey helped us become more cognizant of what users truly valued.
After collecting the data from the families and receiving additional input from those
involved at The Family Dinner Project, the next steps were to develop the app conceptually and
subsequently create a detailed app flow to encompass the user experience. Our research and data
collection allowed us to truly understand the goals and needs of the FDP and begin our final
deliverable with the appropriate mindset.
The Deliverable: An App to Support Family Dinners
Our research provided The Family Dinner Project with a market analysis, new inputs, and
a better understanding of their competitors and constituency. The deliverable would ideally
combine our analysis with input from FDP users and staff to deliver an app that allows FDP to
reach and engage families they could not previously. We broke the app down by sections and
menus (please see attached app flow for more detail):

 Check-In
In order to check users mark whether or not they had family dinner that night.
Users are then taken to a page which tracks their family dinner habits so they can
get an overview of their family dinner.
Provides metrics with number of family meals this week and this month
Option to go to Profile which is comprised of a family picture, a display of all the
badges collected, and a link to all the possible badges they can earn. In the next
rendition of the app this will include an option to build your own badge (see
expansions).
Plan your dinner
This section is a randomized mix and match that provides an individual with one
random recipe, game, and conversation starter. This would help users plan a
dinner on the go while providing users with valuable new content daily.
Content
This section is where all the bulk of the information can be found. It will have a
graphic user interface with small icons, each representing a category such as
conversation starters and recipes as well as an "I'm having trouble with" dropdown menu that addresses specific issues such as picky eaters, technology at the
table, and much more. When one clicks on the icon they would go to a page with
more information. Conversation starters and recipes will be fully populated but
other categories will have 2-3 tips or tricks along with a link to the website for
more information.
Share your Story
We envision a type of blog or feed to be a critical part of engagement and
building community. However in order to reduce or eliminate scrolls of writing
we are building out a FDP version of Instagram. Families are able to upload a
picture and a caption which enters the blogroll of family pictures. This creates a
visual and fun way for families to engage without bogging down the app with
limitless amounts of text. Individuals who want to post extensive written posts
will be directed to the website which has a traditional blog.
Map of FDP Users: We envision including a map of all of the FDP users that have
shared their stories. This map would be at the top of the share your story section
and would create a stronger sense of community as users would be able to see
how many other people are involved with FDP and working on their family
dinners. The individuals would be represented with pins that would hover on their
city or town. We do not intend to have families disclose more personal location
information on this medium. The user will have the ability to swipe left or right to
view the stories, recipes, games, etc. other families have shared. When a
particular family is being featured, the dot representing their city on the map will
turn red so the viewers can see where that particular family is from.
4

 Family of the Month: This featured family is randomly selected from families that
met a certain requirement for number of check-ins. In order to make the app more
engaging some months could have unique family challenges to win Family of the
Month. The winning family would be asked to send in both a picture and a
caption which would automatically stay at the top of the Share Your Story
Section. The "Read More" button below the caption would additionally link back
to the main blog on FDP's website which would contain a more in-depth family
story. The family could also be potentially highlighted in the FDP newsletter. As
the user base on the app grows the Family of the Month could be broken down by
region or state in order to include more families. In the future these challenges
could also become seasonal or one-off challenges (e.g. #GivingTuesday Service
Challenge)

Other Components
Badges System: FDP would create a number of different goals that users would
receive badges for completing. These badges would have challenges for all levels
of difficulty to be inclusive to all families and also cover the various components
of a family dinner. FDP would pre-create the badges including title, shape, and
color but the families would have the ability to insert a picture of their choice into
the center of the badge to add an engagement component and personalize their
badge. For instance, if a family had dinner together 10 times this month they
would get a badge and insert a family picture (e.g. eating dinner together) or a
similarly representative picture (e.g. family christmas tree). After checking in, the
app would ask yes or no questions to determine their progress towards these
preset goals.
Social Media: When logging in, families would be able to post to Facebook or
twitter immediately. Social media is a good way for FDP users to connect both
within and outside of the app. This will help FDP develop a stronger community
and better engage their users. Furthermore, it offers an easy way for users to sign
up and for FDP to collect data and insights on who is using the app and what their
needs may be.
Expansion Plans:
Individual Logins: We thought a good way to expand would be to
incorporate individual login options. This way different family members could
have their own accounts and interact with each other and the family account.
This would allow FDP to create a more tailored experience for its users
particularly for children. FDP would be able to create a more interactive and
gameified version for children in order to better engage them.
Design Your Own Badges: Another expansion plan was a design
your own badges feature where families would be able to build badges for family5

specific goals including some of the design components (e.g. name, color, shape).
This would make the app more interactive and allow families to create more
relevant goals.
Rewards System: Another potential way for FDP to expand would
be to incorporate a rewards system for their users. This would complement the
intrinsic motivation families have to improve their dinners and provide a nice
positive reinforcement for their accomplishments. Some potential rewards are a
new set of China plates or coupons from some of FDPs partners particularly
grocery stores, family centers, and restaurants. The only caveat to this is that it is
important that rewards do not become the focal point of the FDP app. For FDPs
mission it is essentially that people understand and value the importance of family
dinner.
Data Collection
Another critical advantage to developing the app would be that it enables FDP to collect
data on its users. This will help FDP to have a better understanding of their consumer profile.
FDP aims to assist all families and this data will help FDP understand its strengths and
weaknesses and make adjustments to better help underrepresented demographics. This is will
become more important as Family Dinner Project grows in size. The larger FDP grows the less
anecdotal evidence and personal interactions will be able to identify the needs and characteristics
of FDP users. Realizing how valuable this could be for FDP we decided to explore and explain
how app data collection would work and what data would be most important to collect.
Apps offer an easy way to collect data as they are integrated with Facebook. Most users
will login in with Facebook, which will provide the app host with immediate information about
their users. Unlike surveys or user logins, Facebook offers significantly more specific
information. It will provide The Family Dinner Project with common demographic information
including age, race, gender, and location. Additionally, FDP will be able to find out more unique
characteristics including interests, FDP social networks, and work/education information.
Although all of this information will not be valuable it will certainly help FDP have a more
concrete understanding of who their users are.
In order for this data to be of value, FDP needs to focus on the more pertinent data as
organizing the all of the acquired data would take up too many resources. We believe that the
most valuable components of the data would be basic demographics (age, gender, etc.), location,
family size, FDP Facebook friends, and perhaps some data on their interests. We selected this
data to collect from Facebook because it will help FDP determine if they serve certain segments
of the population better than others and what groups of people are most utilizing FDP. We aim to
supplement this with the data gather from the app itself including how often families are eating
dinner. This will help FDP determine how frequently users on their app are having dinners and
compile averages (e.g. average number of dinners per week or month for FDP families).
Furthermore, it will be a good way for FDP to monitor and measure changes and improvements
in users once they begin using FDP as a resource. Similarly they can use Facebook data to see if
6

they are reaching specific target audiences or any groups of people that are consistently unaware
or unable to use FDP.
The only caveat to this is that data collection, organization, and analysis is difficult and
time-consuming. When there is limited data it is not an issue but as FDP expands the amount of
data to analyze increases as well. Additionally it is important to have a strong data collection and
analysis system in place as normalizing poor data is a large burden on time and resources. FDP
has the option of doing this in-house but if it appears to take too many hours away from FDP
workers there are also many data collection and analytics firms that would be of great value.
Some of the most prominent of these include Euclid, MicroStrategy, and ShopKeep. Although
these are more geared towards retail stores they specializing in taking data and formatting it and
structuring it in such a way that organizations can draw clear and actionable insights from the
data. Although FDPs financial resources are limited so is their human capital and thus looking
into alternative data collection organizations may be a good option for them.
Conclusion:
We hope for our app plan and attached layout to be of real value for The Family Dinner
Project. Our outside perspective along with the research we conducted gave us a good idea of
FDP's needs and values. We hope for this app to be able to help them grow their audience and
engage their users, eventually translating a strong family dinner experience into a more familycentric and ethical society. We are certainly available to clarify any confusions or questions
about our deliverables or process. We truly believe this app can make a sizable difference for
The Family Dinner Project and look forward to seeing where the organization progresses from
here.