Keeping food fresh and reducing waste

The development of an app that manages a user's food based on input to prevent food waste.

Deliverables

Develop an app to help users in their everyday lives.

Role

Product Designer, User Researcher, UI Designer
Team: Bobby Birring, Briar Marshall

Timeline

3 Weeks

Tools

Figma, Google Form, Illustrator, Photoshop, Zoom

StayFresh, mobile app prototype preview.
Stayfresh is an app that was developed to provide a solution for users that waste food. Many people in the world tend to waste food because it was forgotten about. User are able to keep track of their food inventory and will being notified by the app when the item is about to expire. From there, the user is able to find recipes based on their inventory to save time on looking at what they can make.They will also be able to see how much food was saved and wasted to keep them motivated from throwing away food.
Stayfresh first began by jotting down possible app ideas that would benefit our daily lives as a user. A very common problem in our lives were that we had a tendency to waste food because it would go bad. From there, a proto persona of a user based on our target audience was created to get an idea of our users which were millennials. This was because millennials are around the age where they are either moving out because of school or want to become more independent and don't have a lot of experience managing food. After that, an interview plan was created to have consistent questions asked in each interview. The goal of this was to compare and contrast our learnings about user's habits and behaviors.

During the first round of interviews, people weren't admitting to wasting or throwing away food in comparison to the anonymous survey. As a result, we changed the approached to the questions were changed to sound more positive. Instead of asking if they throw away food, new interviewees were asked how they manage to keep their food fresh and how often was their food still fresh when being cooked. Although the aim was to still learn about wasted food, changing the wording of the questions open them up into talking more about food they had wasted and wished how they could prevent that to save money.

In the survey conducted, 100% of the participants reported that the most common reason food was being thrown out was because it had gone bad and the majority were in the middle when it came to how often food was being thrown out.

01

User Research
Survey results of reasons why food gets thrown away.
Survey results of how often food gets thrown away.
Survey results of reasons why food gets thrown away.
Survey results of how often food gets thrown away.

02

Definition & Synthesis
After our research through the interviews and survey, an empathy map of what users would say or want was created to get into the mind of our users. The most common problem for users that had cause them to throw away food was that the not only forgot about it but also were too lazy to figure our what to do with it. Based on the interviews, users mentioned that they had no time or just didn't feel like going through their pantry to try to figure out what to cook. Many felt guilty and wish to fix their habits because they felt that it was not only was wasteful environmentally but also to their wallets.

As a result, we wanted to help busy individuals with easy access to quick recipes that use up perishable items in their households and to keep track of how much they have wasted. This is so that they can see how much money and food is being thrown out to change their habits.
“I feel bad for throwing away food because it never got to be consumed… it’s wasteful and costs money.”
“Don't usually keep track of my food. I just find mold and then that's when I throw it out.”
Various thoughts users said during the tests.
After defining the key takeaways from the research, ideas were formed using the "I like, I wish, What If" method to get inside the users mind. To fully understand the user, one must empathize with them and view things from their perspective so many of the ideas were based off of the user's stories. From that, a feature prioritization chart sort out the most useful and effect features for both the company and user.

A competitor analysis was also done while completing this to learn from the competitors SWOT analysis. The goal of this was to evaluate and define what make Triptracker different from the other travel apps out there.

03

Ideation
A snippet of ideas selected from the I wish, I want, What if brainstorming.
SWOT Analysis of competitors
A snippet of ideas selected from the I wish, I want, What if brainstorming.
SWOT Analysis of competitors

04

Prototyping
After determining the features of the app. Low/Mid fidelity wireframes were created and prototyped to get a visual idea of the app from a user flow that was created. User testings were then done to see what features worked and if the user was able to navigate through the process of finding a recipe to cook.
Mid fidelity wireframes
Mid fidelity wireframes
After conducting user testings, we had found that all users were able to complete their tasks but it was not completely straight forward for them. It was determined unnecessary to have the social media share page prompt right after selecting they had cooked the recipe. This prompt had confused users during the tasks as they just wanted to go straight to updating their pantry. Participants mentioned that if they wished to share a recipe or something they had cook, they would do it on their own time and didn't not need reminding. This feature was too aggressive for marketing so it was taken out due to many comments of it feeling unnecessary.

Another insight we found was that participants were able to find the ingredient easily because it was first on the page. However, a majority of participants mentioned that it would take too long if they had to search through more ingredients. As a result, we created tabs and a search feature so that they could easily filter through what they have.

05

User Testing + Outcomes
Final prototype of app.

06

Conclusion + Future Opportunities
After many iterations and testings, users were more likely to throw out less food as they were notified and provided recipes before the item had gone bad. Users were satisfied to see the amount they had saved and wasted as an encouragement to continue on. Future opportunities would be to integrate a way to obtain groceries through the app so that the user can further track their inventory and minimize waste by buying food that is needed. Also we would test how long it would take users to update their ingredient list when they have multiple items to find if it is the most efficient way the user can input the data.
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