A minimal viable product to address the challenge of reducing food waste by aiding in efficient grocery shopping and minimizing duplicate purchases.
Client
PlatePal
Role
User Research | UI/UX Designer
Timeline
3 weeks (Q1 2023)
Plateform
iOS
Process
🔎
Discovery
→
📝
Define
→
🛠️
Develop
→
🚚
Deliver
Discovery
User Interviews
User Interview Objectives
Identify why and how food waste happens in young adult’s homes.
User Requirements
Must do their own grocery shopping
Has thrown out unused groceries at least once
Participants
5 people (20-40 years old)
Interview Location
Conducted via Zoom
Key Insights
🙈
4/5 interviewees mentioned that some food waste can be attributed to food being out of sight.
🤏
5/5 interviewees mentioned that they tend to buy less bulk to reduce waste.
🍳
4/5 interviewees create a meal plan to plan out meals for a couple of days.
📝
All five interviewee’s utilize the notes app to make their shopping lists.
Surveys
Participants
11 people
Age Group
20-40 years old
Survey Objectives
→ Figure out how often participants go grocery shopping → Finding out what types of food are commonly thrown out → Finding out what the leading causes to throwing food out are
When you’re grocery shopping, how far out are you shopping for?
11 responses
What types of food do you commonly waste?
11 responses
Define
Empathy Map
Storyboarding
User Persona
POV/HMW Statement
Discovery
Ideation
Narrowed Solutions
App since users need to use this on the go A visualization of their fridge to know what they have Focus on where most of the waste occurs; the fridge Easy way to log what foods they already have New recipes that could utilize foods they already have.
Feature Matrix
Deliver
Sitemap
Task Flows
Input, actions or outputs
Start/End
Decision Point/Conditional
Steps/Pages
Scanning food into "my fridge"
Adding a recipe into your meal planner
Adding a recipe into a shopping list
Refinement
Low Fidelity → Mid Fidelity → High Fidelity
Recipes to Try Screens
→
→
Meal Planner Screens
→
→
My Fridge Screens
→
→
Recipe Card Screens
→
→
Food Scan Screens
→
→
Usability Testings
Goals
To ensure that key flows are intuitive and accessible for users to comprehend and navigate effortlessly.
Validate design patterns for functions like scanning process and adding to meal planner.
Testing Participants
Young adults in the 20-40 range
Young adults who do their own grocery shopping
Young adults who live on their own
Five participants were interviewed
Key Insights
👇
3/5 users thought it was weird that there was a button to start the scan action.
⏲️
3/5 users mentioned wanting to quickly see how long a recipe would take them to make.
🍳
4/5 users were delighted with the meal planner function.
Analyzing and Prioritizing Test Results
✅
Worked
💡
Ideas
🤔
Questions
🔄
Change
Branding & UI Components
Worked
Task flows felt natural to users.
Users were delighted with the concept.
Users accomplished all tasks, with little effort.
Ideas
Label the icon on the add to fridge button.
Add time icon and how long it takes to make a recipe to recipe cards.
Questions
Should the scan function scan on it own? or should you have to activate it?
Could there be more then one way to complete these tasks?
Change
Add a back button when inside recipes.
Add time icon and how long it takes to make a recipe to recipe cards.
Final Solution
Why have recipes?
During user interviews, I heard from several users who expressed frustration about ingredients going to waste because they often postponed using them, mainly due to their uncertainty about what else they could prepare with those ingredients. This feedback prompted me to introduce a new recipe feature, enabling users to discover various recipes using ingredients they already possess at home or may only require a few additional items.
How does this help?
PlatePal was developed to empower young adults to reduce food waste by offering a user-friendly solution for remote fridge inventory management, including food scanning and manual entry, while also suggesting recipes based on their stocked ingredients.
Scanning ingredients into your fridge
Allows users to quickly add foods into their virtual fridge
Helps the user save money
Tracks expiration dates
Final Takeaways
Why have recipes?
During user interviews, I heard from several users who expressed frustration about ingredients going to waste because they often postponed using them, mainly due to their uncertainty about what else they could prepare with those ingredients. This feedback prompted me to introduce a new recipe feature, enabling users to discover various recipes using ingredients they already possess at home or may only require a few additional items.
What would I have done differently?
In hindsight I would have liked to better schedule my user research so that they would have only taken one day to complete instead of two days.
I would have also liked to conduct more UI pattern research so I could have spent less time iterating on UI components.
