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Food waste is a massive global problem and the USA wastes 80 billion pounds of food each year. With 40% of the waste coming from American homes. Therefore helping reduce waste on a consumer level will make the biggest impact. Hence, how can we help users reduce waste in their households?
The FoodPrint app. With it, family members and friends will be able to keep track of their inventory and be alerted when their food is close to expiring. Along with being alerted, consumers will also be suggested recipes that prioritize using expiring ingredients. The app also allows you to collaborate on shopping lists to make sure everyone in the house is on the same page.
• Design an app that helps users reduce food waste in their household.
• Create a minimum viable product that allows users to input their groceries and be notified when they are about to expire.
Product Designer, Researcher, Sketching, Branding, Wireframing, Prototyping, User Testing
Competitive Analysis, Postcards, Wireframes, Prototype, User Testing
Figma, Illustrator, Whimsical
<a href="https://www.freepik.com/
vectors/house">House vector created by pch.vector - www.freepik.com </a>
<a href="https://www.freepik.com/
vectors/food"> Food vector created by pikisuperstar -www.freepik.com</a>
I began my research process with interviews. This would allow me to get first-hand insight into the factors leading to food wastage in households. I quickly noticed discrepancies between individuals within the same household. With this new insight, I decided to follow my hypothesis that the experience of shopping, planning, and cooking of foods are completely different for those who are the primary individuals responsible for these tasks in their households, compared to others. I interviewed 5 individuals in total, with two groups of two from the same household. One being the person responsible for all food-related activities. While the others did so seldomly.
I quickly found out that there was some resentment from the 3 primary participants towards their family members for having so much of the responsibility of planning and keeping track of using the food before it goes to waste, which fell solely on to them. Another interesting similarity I found was that the 3 primary participants for the most part were more passionate about reducing food waste for either financial or other reasons. This was due to them being more in tune with how much food is being wasted in their house.
With insights from the interviews, I created postcards to help me organize and digest the data. By creating individual postcards for everyone I was able to see 5 overarching themes;
Responsibility, Keeping track of items, Communication, Portion control, and Frequent shopping.
Identifying these themes allowed me to focus and brainstorm the best solutions for the main pain points leading to food wastage in each household.
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After better understanding my users' needs, I decided to do some competitive analysis to see if there is an existing product that solves my users' problems. Unable to find a product that addresses all 5 main pain points, I choose the following competitors because they were able to solve at least one of my users' problems really well. Be it, Best Before’s ability to create and share inventory with others; Supercook’s method of suggesting recipes from your current ingredients, or Instacart's and Shipt’s ability to provide fresh groceries conveniently.
Collaborative experience that shares the responsibility of reducing food waste
After compiling the information from my research, I decided that sharing the food related responsibilities with others in the house would drastically reduce more food waste when compared to one person being responsible for it. By making sure all members are informed, members in the household will be able to keep track of expiring ingredients even if they didn’t buy the item themselves. As well as use said ingredients for cooking, even with no prior knowledge of recipes.
I then created a user flow to fully understand the complete path a user would need to take when using the app. With my mentor's advice decided to lower the feature priority of ordering groceries for delivery for the time being. This would allow me to focus on the most valuable feature of the app; collaborating with your family and friends to share the responsibility of reducing their household food wastage.
Utilizing my research, I began sketching wireframes on paper before eventually creating them in Figma. I started by creating the most important page, the Inventory page, and worked my way through the app using my task flow. By creating wireframes I was able to work out the best color palette for the app.
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Usability Testing
After creating a high-fidelity wireframe, I asked 3 participants to complete a usability test in which they finished the following tasks.
The test revealed, participants struggled to complete tasks 3 and 4 due to unclear icons and poor word choices. Issues that I resolved in the final version.
Users will be able to collectively update their current inventory and be informed on the expiration of each product.
Collaborate by creating a shopping list to make sure everyone knows what is needed and to further share household responsibilities.
Users will be suggested recipes that prioritize expiring ingredients as well as recipes that exclusively use ingredients they already have.
see activities from all members, as well as communicate with them
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It was eye-opening to see in my research, that the responsibility of using food before it expires predominantly fell on 1 person within the household. And how frustrated they were from others in their household not helping.
With the FoodPrint apps approach of collaborative inventory stock and shopping list. Along with notifications of upcoming expiring items and portion-controlled recipes suggestion for those items; I believe that each household can drastically reduce its food waste.
Eventually, I’d love to add an in-app shopping feature that would allow users to order items directly from their shopping list for delivery. According to my research participants felt shopping every other day was ideal for reducing food waste; since this frequency of shopping would dissuade users from buying in bulk and purchase only what was a necessity for their portion-controlled meal.
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