// CASE 02 · WORLD FOOD PROGRAMME · BEIRUT
Stretching dignity across 27 dollars a month.
In Lebanon, WFP had handed out more than 200,000 prepaid cards to Syrian refugee families: 27 USD per person, per month, to spend in partner shops. The brief was a price-comparison app. Three days of co-design in Beirut told us the real problem was elsewhere.
fig 01 · Dalili home: the five staple items, best basket, nearest shop.
fig 01 · Dalili home: the five staple items, best basket, nearest shop.
27 USD
per person, per month, on the e-card
200K+
prepaid cards distributed in Lebanon
3
days of on-site co-design and testing in Beirut
85%+
of refugees with a smartphone, mostly Android
fig 02 · From price list to shopping tool: the app as WFP released it.
01
Executive summary
The money was small and the prices were volatile. Beneficiaries told us the amount was not enough, that some shopkeepers were not fair, that shops were far apart and that the card itself gave them trouble. An app to compare prices was the obvious answer and a partly wrong one: the biggest cost was not the price on the shelf, it was getting to the shop. We reframed the product from "cheapest item" to "best basket, nearest shop", and designed it with the people who would use it, in the camps, with interpreters.
02
Three days, one reframe
➔ Document reading and as-is journey mapping of the e-card programme with the WFP team
➔ Co-design workshop in Beirut: printed symbol cards to define a shared visual grammar
➔ Contextual observation in shops and short interviews on the field
➔ Bodystorming and testing of refined paper prototypes with two groups
Tools & tactics
On-field research with interpreters
As-is journey map
Lean paper prototyping
UX recommendations, Android-first
03
Issues discovered
➔ The amount did not cover a month; any saving had to come from where you shop, not only what you buy.
➔ Shops were far apart, so transport ate the saving a cheaper price promised.
➔ Some shopkeepers were not correct with beneficiaries, and there was no safe way to report it.
➔ Card and PIN problems (lost, blocked, forgotten) had no clear path to a solution.
➔ Text-heavy screens did not work: in a WhatsApp test, people answered with emoji, not words.
Five principles from the field
Best basket, not cheapest item
Nearest first
Emoji are a language
Feedback stays private
Works on a shared Android phone
04
Results
WFP developed and released the app under the name Dalili. The core functions we defined in Beirut shipped: prices for the five staple items, best basket per shop, shops nearby, private feedback on shops. Emoji became the shared language of the workshop and then of the interface. What stayed unresolved: we never got usage data back from WFP, so I cannot tell you how many of the potential 800,000 beneficiaries actually used it. The context has changed radically since 2017, and this case should be read in its time. What I keep from it: the same attention to the edges of a system, low signal, low trust, shared devices, is what I bring today when I design for people the product was not built for.
05
Lessons learned
➔ Human-centred design is economic leverage, not just empathy
➔ In low-literacy contexts, emoji and voice are working UX languages
➔ Co-design with the affected community produces a different product than the one in the brief
➔ Strategic UX can move aid from survival support to systems that give agency back
