MyFOOD

Summary: Create a positive impact on our world for a design sprint project. We designed a useful mobile app for users to monitor their home food inventory, thereby reducing food waste.

Results: All 8 users from the usability tests expressed interest in using the app to reduce food waste and track their food inventory.

Insights: After conducting thorough research in the field, we had to reconsider who our real users were. We learned not to assume in advance who our true users are until we have cast a wide net, delved deep, and consulted experts in the field.

Tools used: InDesign | Miro | Google forms | Figma | Target group: Individuals or larger households that also utilize smartphones.

My work: Research, Interviews of experts, Sketching, How Might We, Heat Map, Storyboards, Prototyping and User testing.

Background

One UN sustainability goal is climate action, and food waste significantly impacts it. Food waste has a major global negative impact on our environment in terms of both production and consumption.

Problem statement

Food waste is a common issue that many individuals with their own households can identify. People often discard food due to a lack of awareness or forgetting what they have in storage.

Solution

Designed an app to monitor food in the freezer, fridge, and cabinet. Users can scan or input items, organizing them correctly.
Receive notifications for approaching best-before dates and receive recipe suggestions based on their food.

Research

The UN reports that roughly 14% of produced food is lost between harvest and retail. Additionally, around 17% of global food production is wasted; with 11% in households, 5% in food service, and 2% in retail.

Our research:

Articles about food waste.
Interviews with experts with in the field from Alnarps University.

Insights from the research:

Lack of awarness. Most consumers don't know that they're a part of the food waste problem.
Single households and families with children. These tend to throw away most of the food according to studies.
Not valuing our food. Overconsumption is a results of not valuing food as in time of crisis.
Increased interest and motivations are important aspects in reducing people's waste.

We conducted a brief survey. With 19 respondents, the survey deepened our insight into the food waste habits of our target users.

Reason to throw away food from the survey:

Food got old
User's poor discipline
Forgot what food was there
Cooked too much food

User Needs:

Improved grocery shopping planning
Enhanced awareness of available home food inventory
Better organization of food items at home

Target Users:
Our focus is on individuals living alone or in larger households of at least three family members cohabiting, all of whom utilize smartphones.

Ideation

Decide

Our storyboard portrays a user discarding food due to expiration. Seeking organization advice, she receives app ads and notifies her family. Notifications and recipes are generated based on her inventory.
By reducing waste, she saves money, plans a family trip, and contributes to global food waste reduction.

We opted to create an app with these 5 key features:

Lists for cabinet, freezer, and fridge items
Shopping list functionality
Barcode scanner to add items to lists
Statistics showing saved food, money, water, and CO2 over time
Recipe generator using available items at home

Prototype

We chose tranquil, muted natural colors.
The home page displays 9 clickable icons with text.

We prioritized a simple, intuitive user-friendly design due to our diverse audience. Our ultimate goal is to integrate the app with fridges, utilizing an external display.

Future plans include RFID syncing for automatic item registration, boosting user efficiency.

Test

We remotely interviewed and tested our prototype with 8 target users, then summarized key insights and patterns.

Our hypothesis was confirmed; all of our users expressed interest in using the app to reduce food waste and track their food inventory.

Test results and interviews strongly aligned our product with user needs, qualifying it as an MVP for future development.

Users desired improved control, organization, and planning to reduce food waste.

" The app gave me some sense of hope, to be able to structure and have a better view of my food inventory in my everydaylife."

Summary: Create a positive impact on our world for a design sprint project. We designed a useful mobile app for users to monitor their home food inventory, thereby reducing food waste

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