Apples to Apples
By Claire Tao, Pulkit Singhal, Qiubei Li
Problem and Solution Overview
Food waste is a common sustainability problem that people have made efforts to reduce. There are many solutions being worked on to deal with this issue on a global level, but there is not as much of an effort to reduce food waste on a local level directly at the farm levels, so we wanted to find a way to increase the amount of people who go to Farmers’ Markets. Since college students are often more conscious of sustainability and want to eat healthier, we wanted to create a solution that would specifically motivate University of Washington students to visit their local Farmers’ Market more often. As such, our proposed solution is to use a mobile application that reminds students to go to the Farmers’ Market with both time and proximity based notifications, as well as keeping track of points earned every time they visit the Farmers’ Market that can be used for discounts. We believe that this solution helps students develop the habit of going to Farmers’ Markets, and motivates them with cheaper prices and other rewards for visiting the Farmers’ Markets often.
Design Research Goal, Stakeholders, Participants
Going into the project, our design was targeted primarily toward farmers and young adults. We believed that to attack the problem of food waste, we would have to first figure out the current problems that farmers face with “ugly” produce, and how we could optimize sales on their end. Once we collected data from farmers, the next step was to interview UW students (young adults) and gather their experiences with the farmers market and buying groceries in general.
To collect the data from farmers, we decided we would have a two-fold approach. First, we went out to multiple farmers’ markets and asked farmers to fill out an online form by scanning from a QR code. While we would ask them to do this, we presented to them our goal of minimizing food waste. Not only did we collect the data from the survey, but we also noted the information we were getting from our conversations with them. The second stage came in by asking them if they were willing to be interviewed by one of us, and if so, to provide contact information so we could reach out. We did this so that we could ensure that only those who were fine with being interviewed were actually interviewed. This limited our initial communication so we could get straight to the interview from the survey without any unnecessary communication in the middle. At least that was the goal. The interview was crucial to the data as only then could we get more insight on their habits and what their concerns were. While you can ask the questions in a simple form, we were afraid that less people would fill it out if they found the form a nontrivial task.
Regarding the students, we chose them because they would be the ones to actually be buying produce from the farmers. We needed information regarding their grocery habits: where they purchased everything, their concerns, how to improve their experience, etc. We used the same approach for students as we did for farmers: first surveys, and then interviews from the students who were ok with being interviewed.
Since collecting the data, we shifted our goal to encouraging incorporating the farmers’ market in a student’s grocery route.
Design Research Results and Themes
Contrary to what most people believe, farmers are generally well versed in some sort of technology, especially if said technology helps their business. They are also extremely interested in any technology that can assist in selling their produce in the future. We found that farmers sell their best produce at the farmer’s market and usually don’t have much commercial use for the produce that looks “ugly”. Some use the produce as decoration for their stalls and donate their “ugly” produce. Most, if not all, food sold at the farmer’s market are the farm’s best looking produce. Farmers that had a large variety of produce are the most popular at farmer markets.
For the most part, students rarely go to the farmer’s market due to how expensive and time consuming it is. Another common complaint is that the farmer’s market only has a seasonal selection of produce and they will need to run to other grocery stores anyways to make up for that deficiency. We noticed students that are interested in their environmental impact, are more likely to go to the farmer’s market. We noticed a few people mentioning going to Imperfect Foods as well as Misfits Market, online delivery services geared towards selling produce that wouldn’t be sold otherwise due to their appearances, showing there is already an interest in buying “ugly” produce. Furthermore, over 90% of students indicated that they would be interested in buying imperfect food at a reduced price.
During our research, we found that our data was significantly skewed towards the student population. As such, we decided to pivot from our original idea of providing a solution for farm food waste and switched to decreasing food waste for students and motivating them to go to the farmer’s market instead. From our student data, the most consistent themes that emerged were that the farmer’s market was too far and expensive. This was very interesting because a lot of students actually go to the farmer’s market area or even further down the Ave to hang out with their friends. We also noticed that students had formed grocery shopping routines and usually go to a few grocery stores.
Proposed Design
These themes inspired our design to focus on encouraging students to change their grocery shopping habits to include the farmers market through giving discounts and convincing them that the farmers market is quite close. Another task that emerged from our research that inspired our design was the functionality of planning out meals to reduce the amount of food wasted.
Design 1: Farmers Market Notification App
Our first design was a mobile application that allows the user to input items on their shopping list, as well as scan produce to see how fresh it is. After inputting items on their shopping list, the application recommends Farmers’ Markets and grocery stores that sell the produce on their grocery list, focusing on recommending Farmers’ Markets, which allows users to know where and when Farmers’ Markets are, and what they can buy at that Farmers’ Market. The user can also set a notification to go to the Farmers’ Market, which both notifies them at a specific time and notifies them if they are close in proximity to the Farmers’ Market. It makes shopping a lot easier for users, since they can easily find out what items they need that can be bought at a Farmers’ Market and sets reminders to help them develop a habit of going to the Farmers’ Market. It also helps them choose their produce more easily, since they no longer have to spend time determining how fresh a produce is
Design 2: Weekly Meal Plan App
Our second design was another mobile application that focuses more on meal planning to reduce food waste. Users would create their meal plan for the week by choosing recipes to make and how many servings they want to make, and the app will calculate the total amount of groceries needed. Then it will take in account of the weekly sales at grocery stores to calculate the most cost efficient place to shop for everything on the list. It would then also give you 10% of the money you save from using the app back to be redeemed only at your local farmers market.
Final Design
Our proposed solution combines the most important features of our initially proposed designs. One of the core features is to motivate students to go to farmers markets by allowing them to set custom notifications, give them discounts to farmers markets by completing app tasks, as well as compete with their friends to see who goes to the farmers market the most. The app tasks include things such as planning their grocery list for the week and going to the previous week’s farmers market. Another core feature of the app is to figure out exactly what groceries students need for the week to reduce food waste and the stress of buying groceries. The app would calculate exactly what you need based on your meal plan for the week as well as suggest tips for making produce last longer and how to repurpose food scraps.
