“Clip” Food Waste in the Bud

By Ben Zhang, Sarah Khan, Khushi Shashidhar, Adithi Raghavan

Food Waste and Its Relationship with College Students

Food waste is a major problem in the United States, especially for college students who often struggle with financial sustainability. The average college student spends around 25% of their monthly budget on food [1] (totaling $500 [2]), but more than one-third of students find it difficult to afford food, leading them to skip meals [3]. This leads to wasted food and money. We gained further insights on this issue when we conducted surveys with 20 college students at the University of Washington from 18–24 years old and also did a follow-up diary study with four of the participants. In our surveys, we found that only 45% of participants consumed all their food in a week — there’s a larger 55% of participants that do not consume all of their food in a week. The diary studies and short answer responses from the survey further revealed the confusion in identifying ownership of food items and whether or not some items are shareable.

Introducing Our Solution: ClipIt

Our design ClipIt includes a hardware clip paired with a companion app that can be used to easily classify and keep track of shared items. The hardware clip highlights the expiration date on its in-unit display, making it easy to view, and the companion app allows users to keep track of inventory, shared items, expiration dates, and meal planning from their phone. The clip is well-suited for our user group (ages 18–24 with roommates), as it clearly designates items that can and cannot be shared amongst people. The companion app also encourages group meal planning and helps users avoid overbuying or wasting food.

Lo-Fi Prototyping and Testing

To test our idea with a paper prototype, we first created a rough sketch of the hardware clip and its in-unit display. The purpose of our initial paper prototype and testing was to observe how our users interacted with the mobile application primarily in adding a food item and planning a meal. We asked our users to focus on these two tasks in our usability tests — we
asked them to assign a new clip to an item, as well as schedule a meal planning session with their roommates. We conducted our usability tests at a friend’s apartment near the University of Washington, as it allowed for all participants to privately and confidently interact with our prototypes. Each usability test was conducted individually. During each test, Khushi facilitated the participant, while Ben provided an introduction and took notes while observing. Both Ben and Khushi answered any questions that the participant had.

We also created a mock-up of the companion app on a separate piece of paper. We tested the prototype by conducting usability tests and heuristic evaluations on individuals in our user group. In three usability tests, participants were able to interact with the hardware clip and
companion app prototype with ease. The main critical incidents and suggestions for improvement that we received are summarized below:

1. Adding Functionality for a Shared Grocery List
The core purpose of our application is to allow users to collaborate with roommates on food sharing habits. According to our participants, a functionality that helps with supporting this is providing a grocery list in the application as well. We already have functionality for meal planning and sharing food items, so it would also make sense to add an option to have a grocery list that is populated when the user wants to cook certain recipes.

2. Enabling Editing Food Clips
Given that it is possible for users to add a food item to a food clip with relevant information around the food item’s ownership, expiration date, and item name, it would make sense for users to also come back and edit these details in case of any mistakes or any changes. This aligns well with user habits earlier in our research study where college students may later tell their roommates that they too can use their food item. Additionally, while the hardware component of our app is integral to our application, it is not practical for users to have an infinite number of food clips. Thus, adding functionality where the user can edit information about the
food item after adding food clips would also be incredibly helpful when they inevitably finish a food item and need to reuse the clip.

3. Providing Functionality that Mirrors Other Products
Most other applications have tools for undoing actions, confirming before proceeding in an action, similar designs for calendar integrations, etc. Given that our participants are familiar with a wide variety of applications that use these tools, it is important to make sure that our product
is consistent with other applications in these tools as well. This is especially important for the purpose of learnability and usability. For instance, when one participant noted that they wanted to delete a food clip, we should ensure that this functionality exists within our application.

Our final paper prototype is seen below. The hardware component is a bag clip that can be easily clipped onto food items and displays the name of the item, as well as its ownership and the date it expires. The accompanying phone application allows users to manage clips, compile a grocery list, and schedule meals to prep with their roommates.

High-Fidelity Prototyping

After receiving feedback from usability tests and a Heuristic critique, we started making changes to our paper prototype in preparation for the final mockup, which can be viewed here. Features such as editing clips were added, and alignment and grouping issues were uncovered that were then adapted when designing the digital mockup.

The main critical incidents we discovered were that the calendar when scheduling meal preps was unclear, and that there was no way to edit a clip after assigning it. We fixed these errors when moving on to the digital mockup.

We chose a cohesive color scheme and decided to display the most relevant information to the user on the home page. As seen below, we display the food that the user currently has that either they bought or that has been shared with them, as well as all of the meal plans they have scheduled.

Task 1: Add a new clip and then edit the information.

The “Your Clips” page displays the clips that have already been added, and that are assigned to you. The color-coded symbols indicate who the clips are assigned to, and the label also shows when the food item will expire. Upon clicking the “Add a Clip” button, the user is taken to the next page where they are prompted to type in the name of the food item the clip is
attached to, as well as who they want to share it with and when it expires. When they click “Done”, the new clip appears on the Clips page. The last slide shows the screen that is brought up from when the edit button is pressed on the “Chips” clip. The user is able to edit the name, who it is shared with, and the expiration date. They can then save the changes or they can delete the clip.

Task 2: Schedule meals with roommates using shared food.

Another feature available in our app is the meals page. The app will recommend recipes to cook based on the food you have available to you (determined by which clips are assigned to you) and what items are set to expire first. If the user selects the “chicken alfredo” recipe, then they are taken to the next screen, where they can see which of the ingredients they already have and what they still need to buy to make it. If they want to make this recipe, they can schedule it and select the date they want to make it and who they want to cook it with on the next page. The people they can make it with is limited by who has access to the ingredients you are using. The final page is the shopping list page, which updates when a new meal has been scheduled.

Summary

Through user research involving two phases (an online survey and then a diary study), two major low-level themes emerged from the design research we conducted: (1) college-age students (18–24 year olds) living with at least 1 roommate developed a habit of sharing their food and groceries with their roommates and (2) these college-age students developed an inherent mutual understanding of ownership and responsibility (attitude) towards shared food items. These observations reinforced the need for a centralized platform that clearly highlighted both personal and shared ownership of food items to avoid confusion among roommates and
encouraged food consumption by factoring expiration dates into meal planning (a task that emerged from user research). Thus, our smart bag clip (hardware component) which seals/clips any open food item much like a standard bag clip (relying on a metaphor) helps users easily identify who can use the food item and when it expires. Moreover, the app allows users to manage and reuse the clips as well as effectively meal plan and manage grocery lists to encourage food consumption, thereby reducing food waste. We envision that users will find the hardware easy to use and can incorporate it into their lives with ease. Our hope is that ClipIt will become the go to solution for people looking to split food properly, reduce food waste, and increase savings when living with roommates or in a shared living accommodation (much like how SplitWise is the go to option for splitting expenses).

Going Forward

As we presented our ideas to others, we received a great amount of feedback and possibilities for future iterations of ClipIt. One major vision is going beyond the food clip when it comes to visually conveying information around food ownership and to instead expand into a larger ecosystem of different hardware components in achieving such a purpose.

This could look like having small bottle lids, cup sleeves, and even different sizes of tupperware, all of which would display information about the corresponding food item’s expiration date and the ownership associated with such items. This outlook towards the future of ClipIt aligns well with the recent trends towards smart devices that are emerging throughout various home appliances. Additionally, given that ClipIt’s focus is for primarily college students living with roommates, we can see its impact with anyone living with roommates. To have such an ambitious vision towards larger avenues for ClipIt then, we would also conduct user testing upon the larger population of people living with others. With help from users and those who may be more familiar with interacting or developing smart devices, we believe that ClipIt can be more than a clip on a food
item — it can be a larger set of solutions aimed to reduce food waste for all.

References

[1] The Student’s Guide to Budgeting in college: BestColleges. BestColleges.com. (2022, March 4). Retrieved October 9, 2022, from
https://www.bestcolleges.com/resources/budgeting-in-college/.
[2] College student spending habits for 2022. Lexington Law. (n.d.). Retrieved October 10, 2022, from https://www.lexingtonlaw.com/blog/credit-cards/college-student-spending-habits.html.
[3] College Student Spending Statistics (Facts & Figures 2022). Admissonsly. (2022, May 5) Retrieved October 9, 2022, from https://admissionsly.com/college-student-spending-statistics/.