Designing a fridge inventory and recipe search app that reduces food waste and encourages cooking
EcoFeast: a 0-1 product design concept
Team: Independent project (1 Product Designer)
Time frame: 4 months
Scope: User Research, Prototyping, User Testing, Iteration
Outcome: High-Fidelity Prototype
Learnings: Product design solution for a real-world problem
Design Process
Empathize: Surveys + Interviews
Splitting Payments for Users
25 responses helped me understand people’s behaviors and attitudes when it comes to groceries and cooking at home
100% of survey-takers said they worry about wasting groceries
Interviewees and survey-takers identify lack of time as a key barricade to cooking at home more and managing their fridge inventory
Interviewees described grocery shopping as a chore, as stressful
Moving Forward: Why do users prefer splitting evenly? What are the frustrations users have with splitting bills?
Define: Persona
Akshata, the student foodie
Working student: Akshata has very little free time during the week between school and her job
Routine-oriented: Being principled and organized, Akshata finds messiness and waste bothersome
Eco-conscious: It’s important to Akshata that she reduces her ecological footprint wherever she can
Foodie: One of the greatest joys in life for Akshata is yummy food
Moving Forward: How would Akshata’s frustrations and goals manifest within her day-to-day?
Define: User Journey
Cooking dinner on a school night
Imagining this scenario highlighted possible pain points on a timeline when Akshata uses existing tools to find recipes
Moving Forward: How can I solve for these clearly defined pain points?
Ideate: Design Hypothesis
User Conflict
Food Waste: User is concerned about impact on the environment and wants to enjoy good food, but doesn’t know how to stop wasting groceries within her busy schedule.
My Solution:
A fridge inventory recipe search product that will:
maximize groceries
reduce food waste
encourage creative cooking
Moving Forward: What will this solution look like?
Ideate: Task Flows, Sketching
Adding ingredients, searching recipes
Turning main functionalities into task flows into rough screen sketches
Moving Forward: How will users navigate the product?
Ideate: Information Architecture
Product structure and navigation
I organized an idea of how the pages and functionalities would all work together with a site/navigation map.
managing inventory is first step to minimizing food waste
saving recipes allows for quick reference and easy planning/cooking
shopping list helps maximize groceries through intentional shopping
progress on minimizing food waste encourages users to cook more and constantly improve
Moving Forward: Time to start prototyping + bringing this design concept to life!
Prototype: Mid-Fidelity
Bringing main tasks to life
Mid fidelity prototypes allow me to see how task flows look, and set up for user testing
Add ingredients to inventory
Search recipes based on inventory
Add recipe ingredients to shopping list
Home page, account, progress
Moving Forward: Test screens with users and iterate before high-fidelity prototyping
Prototype: Mid Fidelity
Implementing User Feedback
I asked users to move through the mid-fidelity screens completing my defined key tasks. Here are some findings:
Navigation buttons are hard to see
Adjust buttons to meet accessibility standards
Solution:
User Feedback:
Progress measurement is confusing
Percentage use versus waste
Our Solution:
User Feedback:
