samira dang

OneFridge

UX Designer/ UX Researcher/ Passion Project/ Summer 2022

Background

In 2022, I and my teammates worked on a group project addressing college students' food waste issue. Reflecting on our approach, I realized that there are many ways that we can improve our solutions. So I decided to take a crack at it again!

Problem space

Due to their hectic schedules, managing leftovers and expired food is a universal challenge among college students. Students often forget about what is in their fridge, leading to the unfortunate spoilage of vegetables and fruits. Therefore, I realized students need a tool that helps them minimize food waste throughout the entire grocery-cooking process.

My solution

OneFridge is an inventory tracking app for your pantry at home. Creating OneFridge brought a lot of joy to me. I hope that it can help students manage their day-to-day shopping-cooking hassle better and avoid wasting spoiled ingredients— something I'm also guilty of.

Exploring the problem

Our group conducted some research on food waste problems on a macro and micro level. Some key findings that we discovered:

  • Across the world, there is an abundant supply of food, however, hunger and malnutrition is still an ongoing problem in many countries.

  • 56% of food waste is avoidable.

  • 85% throw away food because it is no longer edible.

  • Shopping lists not determined by meals generate 3.8 times food-related garbage.

Stakeholders

College students are our primary stakeholders. Based on the most common living situations referred to in our initial user research, we divided them into 3 groups:

  • living with roommates

  • living with family

  • living alone

Hearing from the users

The three main stakeholders are students living with roommates, living with family and students living alone.

Questionnaire

  • Design

    • Most of the questions are in multiple choice or multiple-select format, and based on information we got from the current literature. We made it as simple and straightforward as possible, leaving questions that require more details for the interview.

  • Findings

    • We found out that 40% of food waste comes from produce. 85% of food thrown away is because it is no longer edible or spoiled, even when 62% of people check the fridge, freezer, or cupboards before shopping.

Interview

  • Design

    • We adopted semi-structured interview approach, ensuring that each participant wasn't posed with identical questions. This allowed us to delve deeper into individual experiences. Additionally, we incorporated a brief observation session where we inquired about the contents of participants' refrigerators and their intended usage for the items.

  • Findings

    • After talking with a few students, we found that fresh produce and dairy products are often wasted because they are left forgotten in the fridge for too long and go bad before being used. Most students check for expiry dates when grocery shopping, yet keeping track of the dates is still a challenge.

Key takeaways

  • Users' main motivation is saving money.

  • Users are unaware of what is in their inventory and not efficiently use up the ingredients, which results in overbuying and ingredients left unused for a long time.

Competitive analysis

To have a better understanding of the market, I compared popular food tracking apps and analyzed their strengths, weaknesses.


A high-rated choice from AppStore, NoWaste (first 2 photos), is not fully developed, does not have recipe suggestor, and based on AppStore reviews, scanning function does not work for all items.


Similarly, with Fridgely, another popular tracking app, users cannot manually add an item without a code. Both NoWaste and Fridgely lack data sharing feature for couples, roommates. This helped me discover an opportunity where OneFridge can grow.

NoWaste (photos from AppStore)

Fridgely (photos from AppStore)

Experience map

After conducting research, I created a user's experience map to visualize user's actions, thinking, feeling, bright spots and pain points. Some quantitative considerations I realized through this process are:

  • What can I make from my current pantry?

  • What kind of food has expired or went unused since last shopping trip?

  • What kind of ingredients did my mom stock up last Monday?

User's Experience Map from Planning to Handling Leftovers

Userflow

Prototyping & Testing

To test, I asked users to perform key tasks: populate their inventory, edit their inventory, add a family member to their team fridge, look for a recipe to work with their existing ingredients.

Some questions I thought of are:

  • The various emotions the user have throughout using the app. How does the user feel when they see a statistics, if they saved or wasted an ingredient?

  • Was they confused, or hesitant at any point?

  • Was navigating the app seamless and straightforward? So that using the app will be a no-brainer in their routine.

2nd iteration

3rd iteration

Final Solution

  • A one-stop tracking dashboard for everything in your pantry

Feeling overwhelmed with the amount of ingredients available and losing track of what will expire soon was a major concern for many people. OneFridge provides a simple and seamless tracking experience, with information being broken down into digestible size. Recipes suggestion come in handy when users need some ideas for dinner, without purchasing extra items. Weekly insights motivate users to plan their eating better and and save money!

The overall tone of OneFridge is warm and bright, as it evokes tastebud and stimulates appetite.

  • Push notifications to remind user of expired items and to upload receipts

Based on user's current location, OneFridge can identify their grocery trip and remind them to update inventory after a visit. Users can customize the amount of time before an item expired to receive timely notifications.

  • Invite your friends and family to share the Fridge

Learning & Reflections

As a fellow gal that struggles with managing my weekly grocery, I felt close to heart with users' problem and had a lot of fun working on it. Pondering on the project, I still have some thoughts in mind.



A potential next-step:

Incorporate micro-interactions throughout the UI to increase stickiness



My curiosities:

How might adjusting the quantity of ingredients look like for users, without being too cumbersome?

How can data about user's grocery shopping and eating habits enhance their experience with the app?

Would users be able to reduce the quantity of an ingredient after trying out a recipe?

I want to think more about crafting a habitual app for users, since we all grocery-shop, cook and repeat.