When Seattle’s Rainier Valley Food Bank (RVFB) opened its new community hub in the Rainier Beach neighborhood in 2025, staff began asking new questions about how people experienced the organization’s services, from learning about available resources to navigating the food bank for the first time.
To help answer those questions, RVFB partnered with students in the University of Washington’s Department of Human Centered Design & Engineering (HCDE). Over the course of a year, three Directed Research Groups and a bachelor’s capstone team worked alongside food bank staff, volunteers, clients, and neighbors, helping the organization see its services through new eyes.
Understanding the food bank and its community
The partnership began in Summer 2025, before the food bank’s new facility opened to the public. Led by Andrew Davidson, an emeritus professor in HCDE, the Directed Research Group brought together students Zohra Butter, Jordan Cheung, Haneen El-haj, Zahra Hassan, and Vivian Li to work alongside RVFB staff as the organization prepared for its transition into the new space.
Throughout the summer, they spent time learning how the organization worked and how people experienced its services. Through interviews, site visits, and conversations with staff, they explored how clients learned about available resources, where communication could be strengthened, and how the new facility could better support the community it serves.
For Davidson, the summer project reflected an important part of HCDE’s approach: taking time to understand people, organizations, and experiences before developing solutions. “When people hear HCDE, they often think about apps or products. But every organization has services and systems that shape how people interact with it,” he said. “Our role is to help students understand those experiences before deciding how they might improve them.”