An app designed to help young adults reduce household food waste by efficiently utilizing their groceries and visualizing their consumption habits.

Role:

UI/UX Designer

Responsibilities:

Primary Research, High-Fidelity Prototype, Animation

Duration:

09/2023 -12/2023

Tools:

Figma, Procreate, After Effects

Team members:

Hye Yoon Kim, Lakeisha Esthetique Sharonina, Amanda Guo

Problem

Busy young adults are more prone to producing household food waste in the United States.

As a young adult who loves cooking, I always look forward to grocery shopping with my roommates on the weekends. However, my unpredictable schedule frequently leads to spoiled produce, like unopened bags of spinach that get lost in the back of my fridge. This recurring issue has inspired me and my team to research household food waste.

Solution

Stay Fresh is an app designed for young adults who balance hectic schedules, tight budgets, and a step toward environmental awareness. It merges a digital fridge, visualization of food waste, and personalized cookbook to help users to utilize their groceries.

Narrowing down the scope

Diary study to collect qualitative data

To address the broad issue of food waste, we began by pinpointing our target users through credible secondary research. Our findings led us to focus on busy young adults aged 18-34 since they are more likely to waste food compared to other age groups.

Survey to collect quantitative data

The survey captured users' perceptions based on memory but not their actual food waste habits in households. To understand the prolonged process of grocery shopping and usage, I opted for a diary study method, focusing on behavior over time. We recruited 11 participants to track food waste activities for 10 days. With questionnaires at the beginning, middle, and end, 8 completed the study, revealing a pattern of buying and wasting food among most participants.

Generating insights

My team and I compiled our primary and secondary research findings and synthesized them through affinity diagramming to derive the key insights listed below.

  • Participants' food waste stems from busy, unpredictable schedules, and sometimes laziness.

  • Users favor quick, efficient grocery use, leaning towards fast meals and meal prep.

  • Visually tracking food waste effectively encourages them to reduce it.

  • Common issues include forgetting fridge contents and not knowing proper storage methods.

  • For this group, reducing household waste is a lower concern, affecting their willingness to change behaviors.

Identify pain points

Lastly, we transformed the insights into pain points that led us to opportunities to help busy young adults reduce household food waste.

  • How might we motivate young adults to reduce household food waste?

  • How might we help users keep track of fridge content and educate them on effective storage methods for perishables?

  • How might we simplify the cooking process for time-strapped young adults?

  • How might we help busy young adults understand the amount of food they wasted?

After defining our target user group, my team and I sent out 38 surveys to participants spanning ages 18 to 34. The goal of the survey was to understand users’ shopping habits and their attitudes towards food waste. From the surveys we concluded the following:

User persona and journey map

The user persona guided us throughout the design process since we had a clear vision for who are designing for. While the user journey helped us identify opportunities to improve user experience.

Identifying design goals

We identified four design principles essential for creating effective solutions tailored to busy young adults. These principles serve as guidelines for what the solution should fulfill, rather than being the solution itself.

Ideating for solutions

My team and I brainstormed solutions for each design goal freely, then narrowed them down based on feasibility, viability, and desirability. We involved 10 participants in a vote to assess these ideas, ultimately selecting features that help users reduce household food waste.

Information Architecture and User Flow

After I and my teammates identified all the key features, we constructed the info architecture to better understand the hierarchy. We then mapped out the user flow to design an intuitive experience and learn how users will interact with our app.

Low Fidelity Wireframe

Based on the information architecture and user flow, I mapped out the wireframes and refined them after receiving feedback from my team.

Design System

To ensure consistency and usability in our product, my team and I established a design system. We combined serif and sans-serif fonts to complement our mix of illustrations, icons, and stock photos. Since our app is focused on food and utilizing groceries, we composed a color palette that plays into the themes.

High Fidelity Prototype

Following our design system, my team and I complete the first iteration of high fidelity prototype for usability testing.

We recruited 6 participants to complete the following tasks using the Think Aloud method. The questions were focused on the two main features — data visualization and digital fridge.

Participants said:

“The text is hard to read.”

“The trash can looks sad…”

“How do I get to my groceries page?”

“I’m confused by the layout.”

How we addressed the issue:

1. Responding to user feedback, we separated our combined data visualization and digital fridge features for clearer navigation.

2. We also replaced the negatively viewed trash can icon with a bright avatar, enhancing user experience and showcasing our adaptability and empathy in design.

We recruited 5 participants for the second round of usability testing, still following the Think Aloud method. On top of the questions we asked during the first round, we added questions about the usability of the tracking page and infographics.

Participants said:

“What are the charts for?”

“How do I go to the other charts?”

“Are the arrows clickable?”

Iteration 1

How we addressed the issue:

Realizing our designs were too information-heavy, we redesigned the interface with intuitive, clickable widgets, enhancing user experience and usability through a simple, user-centric, and functional layout.

Iteration 2

Catering to the busy schedules of young adults, users can simply take photos to record and view their fridge contents. Alternatively, you have the option to manually enter your groceries. This allows us to help visualize household food waste as well as recommend recipes for quick and healthy meals for users.

Sort and learn about your groceries

Sort your groceries to track their shelf life and learn optimal storage methods and nutritional benefits. Stay Fresh also automatically sends out notificiations to users when groceries are close to expiring.

Keep track of your habits and growth

The tracking page features three components: a percentage of used groceries, items close to spoiling, and a concise budget analysis. By visualizing the data we collected and tracking the user’s progress, we aim to encourage users to reduce food waste.

A cookbook curated just for you

Based on the user’s available groceries and dietary needs, Stay Fresh recommends recipes while displaying information such as prep time and popularity to cater to busy young adults.

Quickly log your groceries

Key learnings

  • User feedback might hurt, but it is necessary

    Before our first usability test, I assumed our designs were intuitive and easily navigable. However, the user feedback was unexpectedly critical and very much necessary for us to improve the user experience, this realization led my team and I to conduct a second round of testing, focused on refining our app's functionality.

Special thanks to my team and Professor Ping for such an amazing semester! I truly learned a lot about digital product design and will forever cherish it : )

Have a question, some feedback, or an outrageous idea?

Please, please, please send it my way :D