[stub] Change AK's balnce message from food stamp to SNAP or Quest

[brendanbabb]

I am getting feedback from the AK Food Bank and the State wanting to move away from the term food stamp. I am querying if SNAP or Alaska Quest balance would be better and also trying to track down if other balances are listed on the message if you have TANFA or other benefits.

[daguar]

We have two options:

1. Hard-edit the Alaska response
2. Refactor the MessageGenerator to make the specific name of the program defaulted but overridable (eg, "Your FOOD_STAMP_NAME balance is X")

I agree this could be a relatively common request, so I lean towards option 2.

[alanjosephwilliams]

I would caution against making this change solely because there is a
government initiative to re-brand. Ultimately, the language we use should
prioritize our end user's mental models.

Of course we should serve government needs and users equally when we can.
If this feature is added, we should attempt to do some A/B testing to see
our KPIs suggest lower brand recognition of state program names compared to
'food stamps'. It would be nice to have some real data to bring into our
future conversations in other states.

On Sat, Dec 20, 2014 at 4:30 PM, Dave Guarino [email protected]
wrote:

We have two options:

1. Hard-edit the Alaska response
2. Refactor the MessageGenerator to make the specific name of the
   program defaulted but overridable (eg, "Your FOOD_STAMP_NAME balance is X")

I agree this could be a relatively common request, so I lean towards
option 2.

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[brendanbabb]

Alan, I agree on data. I am trying to figure out if you have an Alaska Quest EBT card if you would be more likely to notice a flyer or ad with that on it or if it was SNAP. Does North Carolina have any data although their name isn't too much different than Food Stamps?

My hunch is that if you have a friend who knows you are on SNAP and they see a Food Stamp flyer or ad they might remember to mention it to you vs. if it said SNAP.

Also it makes language translations trickier potentially if you have a language where you can't just swap out "Food Stamp" for "SNAP" in the translation.