Helping reduce food waste by digitally keeping track of the food you have at home
Client Contribution
Self-Project UX Designer
Feb - May 2022 (12 Weeks) UI Designer
Team
Solo
Solo
OVERVIEW
A wasted bag of spinach every other week may not seem like a big deal but the majority of food waste in Australia comes from personal households.
Pantry Buddy is designed for mobile users to combat this issue. This pantry app allows you to easily keep track of what food you have at home, wherever you may be.
PROBLEM STATEMENT
Busy people, who are mindful of the environment, feel frustrated when food in their fridge spoils and wants to reduce the amount of food wasted but struggle to remember food expiry dates due to their busy schedules.
SOLUTION
A mobile app was created with two main functions - a digital pantry list to take with you anywhere and setting push reminders for any expiring foods.
RESEARCH
The first step in the design process was to understand who, what, and why. Through surveys, one on one interviews and competitor analysis, we were able to understand who our users were, what the issue was, and why it was happening.
MAPPING
After sorting through all the information from the user research, it was clear that three main themes were emerging - issues with the organisation of foods, many people forgetting about expiry dates, and how they feel about food waste.
MEET EVELYN.
Evelyn Jones is our main persona, she is an individual who is conscious of the amount of food she wastes but leads a busy lifestyle due to her job commitments.
EVELYN'S JOURNEY
Evelyn needs a way to organise and keep track of her fridge and pantry as she is often forgetting what food she has and when they expire.
By following Evelyn's full journey, I was able to identify the gains and pains she might encounter when using the app but also within her physical space. With the pain points, I was also able to identify opportunities to help create a better emotional experience for the users.
HOW MIGHT WE...?
From the user research, I was able to discover three key insights and rephrased them into How Might We's:
I can't remember the expiry date because I'm too busy
How might we help time-poor users to stay informed about the expiry dates of large volumes of food?
I often forget what I have in the fridge or pantry
How might we ensure users confidently remember what they have in the fridge or pantry?
I buy too many ingredients and forget to use what I already have
How might we educate users on how to reuse or recycle leftover ingredients?
These HMWs provided the opportunity for innovative thinking and propelled me into the ideation phase where I conducted crazy 8 sessions for rapid ideation sessions.
MVP
Many good solutions were brought up during user research and ideation, however, as this is a new product, there was potential for this project to become too big to handle.
The MVP allowed me to prioritise the features that would be most beneficial to the user in the allocated amount of time I had for this project.
The rest of the ideas, especially the high-valued ones, would fall out of scope and could be considered for phase 2 of the project.
USER FLOW
Creating a user flow allowed me to visualise the logical steps the user would take to complete the main task of setting up reminders for expiring foods.
This also allowed me to find the simplest path for the user to take with the most benefit.
LO-FI WIREFRAMES
Following the user flow closely, the creation of my lo-fi wireframe allowed me to consider the app's information hierarchy, navigation, and interactions without getting stuck with how the app should look.
This wireframe provided a good base for creating my first prototype.
USER TESTING
The prototype then underwent user testing where five participants were asked to complete three tasks. Here are some common observations and the actions I took to remedy this.
Feedback:
What are considered common items for most people aren't common items for some, for example, vegetarians wouldn't want to see meat.
Action:
Added a screen in the sign-up process that asked for dietary preferences
Added list categories for each page for clarity
Feedback:
Would have liked to see the 'Add Food' button on the home page as it felt unnecessary to have to click into a particular list to add the item
Action:
Added the 'Add Item' button and navigation bar to the home page
Feedback:
Users automatically clicked on the status bar on the homepage or the list page assuming that they could filter for the list from there
Action:
Changed the status bar into clickable buttons that allowed users to filter for the expiring and expired items
FINAL DESIGNS
NEXT STEPS
Due to the limited timeframe of the project, this final prototype is only the first of many steps. Further testing will need to be done to ensure the flow of the first revisions are smooth and intuitive.
The scope of the project had to remain quite limited but after working out the kinks of the first design, further features could be added to enhance the user's experience of the app.
Some of these features include:
Integrated shopping list
Recipe generator from ingredients in your kitchen
Success measurement of the amount of food saved