Feature: Add (or expose) tags for Baby diapers, Period products, and similar properties… to the org listings, search, and edit screens

[Bryan Wu]

This is priority 3/5 (where 5 is most urgent). This will help a lot of families, and sets the stage for much better search functionality.

This could involve a developer and a product/designer/researcher to help with how it looks and for placement of checkboxes on the edit screens. If the latter is not available, use your best judgement as it can be modified later.

Research is also useful to determine what other high-priority tags we'd want to add.

Overview

Enable searching and displaying (new?) tags for our listings: Baby diapers, Period products, Kosher, Halal

This may involve adding checkboxes for each tag to the edit interface, displaying these tags on search results, and adding these tags to the filters available to food seekers.

Context

Right now we have minimal 'tagging' of our content — pantry and/or meal program, what types of pantry items are available (baked goods, dairy, etc.). But there are other important criteria that people search on.

Other sites support this feature and it can be pretty important when homing in on locations to contact or visit.

For example, some seekers are also looking for diapers and period products. Since most pantries do not provide these, finding one can make a big difference to folks. Also, like food, both are expensive and are necessities.

Fortunately, some (but not many) other listing websites now are starting to highlight when these are available.

We should add these tags because these are important for food seekers and because it reduces the search effort for our users.

How is it now?

Currently we don't have a way to filter or search by any tags. Also, our text descriptions are not yet searchable, so no way to find a listing that mentioned 'baby diapers' or 'kosher'. This means the user must read every single listing and call, if they want to find out if the service meets their criteria.

John D said that we currently use a tags-type system already so perhaps we can expose that existing system to the user.

Proposed new feature

The goal would be to highlight these tags, if present, in the listing:

And to use these tags as filters:

And add checkboxes to the organization edit interface (if needed):

To start, we’d want these tags (or their equivalent):

• Baby Diapers,
• Period products,
• Kosher
• Halal

In the future, pending more research and review of our ability to be accurate, we may want to add more tags such as these:

• LGBTQ+-friendly tags as well (as this is also important (for example LGBTQ+ students need to know what's a safe space before visiting a pantry))
• Eligibility requirements or "No eligibility requirements" (need to do more research about what those classifications might be, or if this is even possible)
• "Same-day", "Walk-Up"
• "Sermon required" (some meal programs require you sit for a sermon before receiving food)
• Baby formula

Goals:

• 1. Add new tags onto the organization editing screens (if needed)
• 2. Allow users to search/filter by these tags
• 3. Highlight these tags in search results and detailed listings

References:

Examples from other sites:
https://www.lafoodbank.org/find-food/pantry-locator/

Article: Should Period Products Be Free?
Article: Three items you didn’t know some food banks distribute

[Bryan Wu]

If you have additional potential tags, now’s a good time to discuss and possibly list them in priority order by need (which will then need to be evaluated for ’can we actually get this information reliably?)). There’s a list of possible future tags in the issue so feel free to modify it.

Also, if you have past research or SME comments about these types of things, please add it to the description in the ‘references’ section and re-sort as needed.