// 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.

Dalili home screen: prices of the five staple items and nearby shops

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

days of on-site co-design and testing in Beirut

85%+

of refugees with a smartphone, mostly Android

Dalili app for the World Food Programme, overview

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

We were not designing to buy a bigger TV for less. We were designing to stretch dignity across 27 dollars.

Co-design is listening, watching, arguing, understanding and making, together.

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

// Working with vulnerable communities

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