Gus
Paludeti
Paludeti
User Research | Brand Designer | UI/UX Designer
March 2023 - March 2023 (3 weeks)
I helped young adults reduce food waste by providing them with a convenient way to keep track of what's in their fridge, even when they're away from home.
Millennials waste 25% more food than baby boomers, according to a report by the Natural Resources Defense Council. Gen Z wastes the most food, with 70% reporting they throw away food at least once a week. Food waste has significant impacts on the environment, economy, and society. Addressing this issue is essential for a sustainable and equitable food system.
I conducted user interviews to understand the causes and reasons for food waste among young adults. This allowed me to explore their systems and identify opportunities for developing targeted solutions to improve those areas.
• Interviewed five participants ranging from ages 28-36
• Interviews were held via Zoom
• Interviews were semi structured with a discussion guideclick here for discussion guide
5/5 interviewees mentioned that they tend to buy less bulk to reduce waste.
4/5 interviewees mentioned that some food waste can be attributed to food being out of sight.
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.
Based on user interviews, I gained insights into young adults' home systems, attitudes towards food waste, and its causes. To gather quantitative data and identify problem areas, I conducted a survey. This combined approach better informed me of the problem areas in young adults’ home systems.
of young adults who took the survey said that they mostly waste fresh produce.
of young adults who took the survey said that they shop a week at a time.
Based on the insights I obtained during the discovery phase, I began defining my potential user. This empathy would serve as a guiding reference throughout the rest of the defining stage of my project.
With an understanding of my possible user and their pain points, I evaluated the needs of the users, business and how they would interact with technical constraints.
With user characteristics defined, I created a storyboard to immerse myself in their perspective.
After understanding my user's perspective, I created a user persona to guide my design decisions, aligning with their needs and preferences.
After defining my user persona, I created a point-of-view statement and a how-might-we statement to pinpoint the specific problem and guide my design process accordingly.
With a clear POV/HMW statement, I began ideating and identifying problem areas, enabling me to devise effective solutions to address them.
After identifying the root causes of the problem, I focused on the key aspects and developed targeted solutions to address them. From there, I narrowed down the following solutions that specifically cater to the needs of my persona.
After evaluating various solutions, I organized the features to prioritize the ones that would have the greatest impact on my persona, helping me determine which ones to focus on creating.
Based on my refined solutions, I have created a sitemap to effectively inform the information architecture of the PlatePal app.
After creating the sitemap, I carefully selected the three most crucial tasks that would directly tackle the problem encountered by my user persona. These three flows were the focal points I aimed to validate through my testing process.
After understanding the design requirements, I created low-fidelity wireframes to quickly develop and refine my ideas. Moving on to mid-fidelity wireframes, I added more context and refined design patterns, ultimately leading to a higher quality high-fidelity prototype.
After developing high-fidelity prototypes for the user flows, the next step was to conduct user testing. The primary objective of the testing was to ensure that the design patterns were intuitive for users and that the key tasks could be easily accomplished.
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.
Some users commented that there was no back button from the recipes.
After refinement I solidified the UI components and branding to apply to the final prototype.
Users were wasting significant amounts of food, primarily due to forgetfulness and overbuying groceries, leading to spoilage of produce and leftovers. To address this, I created a solution that offers users a visual representation of their fridge, providing timely alerts when food is close to spoiling. Tested users found the concept useful and delightful, resulting a more resourceful and less wasteful user.