Food Print

Adrian Dinh, Ermian Wei, Jun Yu, Sunny Lee

The Challenge

Most people have experience wasting food in their daily life, whether it be missing an expiration date, or simply forgetting to make food. A study using data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture shows that 31.9% of the food acquired by an average U.S. household has gone to waste. We wanted to create an accessible and convenient way for households to reduce their waste, and to reimagine ways to use ingredients before they had to be thrown away.

Solution

Our final design, later named FoodPrint, envisioned a mobile app that addressed the issue of household food waste in three primary ways: by allowing users to keep track of the amounts and expiration dates of their household food items, recommending users recipes with respect to their current inventory and soon-to-expire ingredients, and connecting users with others in their area who will arrive to pick up their unwanted food. As a much more convenient and effortless alternative to manual note-taking, FoodPrint users can simply scan their grocery receipts to log their food items into the virtual inventory and receive mobile notifications before a food item expires.

Paper Prototype, Testing Process, and Results

Our paper prototype for FoodPrint was created on and printed from a collaborative design website called Miro; a picture of the prototype both on Miro and in real life can be seen below.

The participants during our user testing process were first presented with the cut-out paper prototype above, beginning at the sign-in screen. Before beginning the simulation, participants were presented with context; they were pretending to be someone interested in reducing their personal food waste, which was their reasoning behind downloading the FoodPrint app. With one of our teammates presenting tasks for the tester to complete using the paper prototype app, another teammate swapping out app screens depending on the tester’s actions, and a third teammate taking notes on critical incidents that happen during the process, we tested the prototype with a number of unique users.

Among the critical incidents during these paper prototype user tests, we found three primary issues with the current version of the app:

1. Users would not know to tap food items on the “Inventory” screen to access the item’s detailed information

Before revision After revision

1. A general lack of confirmation or feedback upon completing certain actions. For example, the user received no feedback about what how their inventory was updated after scanning a photo from their camera roll for food items

Before revision After revision. These dialogue boxes appear on top of

the previous screen and provide feedback

1. Users would prefer not to have to chat to set up a pick-up appointment for food items with the donor/donation recipient; they would rather have the app be the middleman entirely.

However, our team examined other websites and apps with similar user interactions, such as Facebook Marketplace and Craigslist, and we found that having users personally communicate their location rather than having the app publicly distribute their location to other users would be much more preferable for privacy reasons, and so we kept the chat feature in our final design. This research trend made the team much more aware of potential privacy and user safety problems with our design.

Digital Mockup

Task 1: Track grocery amount and its freshness

Step 1: Input your grocery

On the “Scan” page, accessible by tapping “Scan” on the taskbar, users can use their mobile device’s camera to scan food items or receipts. Alternatively, users can go to their camera roll to scan existing photos of their food items. If some problem or inaccuracy occurs, users can resolve to input the food items manually.

Step 2: Manage food in inventory

On the “Inventory” page, accessible by tapping “Inventory” on the taskbar, users can view and search through the food items currently in their inventory. Plus and minus buttons allow for adjusting the current amount of an item by the current unit of measurement. By tapping a food item, its detailed information will be displayed, which users can modify. This inventory allows users to have an accurate overview of all their groceries in the house. Users could track and update any details regarding their groceries. Reminders regarding expiration will be sent to users from time to time.

Task 2: Exchange

This exchange platform aims to redeliver unwanted food to people who are lacking it. People that couldn’t finish their groceries in time could post donations on the app, while people looking for free alternatives could contact these donors for pick-up options.

Step 1: Donate unused food

Either by tapping “Donate” on the “Exchange” screen, accessible by tapping “Exchange” on the taskbar, or by tapping “Donate” on the “Detailed Info” screen for a certain item, the user can post their food item for donation. For this food item, they must select possible time slots during which they are available to exchange with a willing recipient.

Step 2: Get/pick-up free food

People who are looking for free alternatives in their diet could input their search range in miles. They will be navigated to a page filled with food options within the range. They can click on the pictures of the food to learn more details about it. Once they show interest in a food item, they should choose times that they are able to go pick up the food.

Step 3: Match!

When a match is made, a chat window will be opened between the donor and the recipient, which allows them to further discuss pick-up details regarding the exchange.

From our preliminary mock-up to our final digital mockup, there are not many revisions being made. Our team updated the logo. Generally, we are satisfied with the simplistic design and the color theme, green.

Summary

We conducted a series of semi-structured interviews, asking people who cooked and grocery shopped for themselves about their food waste habits. Through the research we discovered that most people had difficulty remembering expiration dates, or that oftentimes people simply did not have time or want to eat the food they knew was about to expire soon. Since we were interviewing people who were cooking for themselves only, we interviewed many young adults who were either in college or newly graduated and renting out a living space. This influenced us to think about the accessibility of our product to a group of people with less disposable income, time, and ownership of their space. With all of these things in mind, we decided to design a phone app that would keep track of expiration dates and give suggestions for what to do with unwanted food. The suggestions included giving recipe ideas and allowing users to find others to donate their food items to. We hope our app will get our users to think about their food waste differently, and that as they do this they and their community will lower their household food waste. We envision that our app will serve to remind people about the unused ingredients in their kitchen, and as inspiration for what to do when they have leftovers.