saving users from wasting their money on food that gets thrown out before it was used AND saving their time by generating recipes based on the items they already have
Project Timeline: 1.5 months
Tools: Figma, FigJam, Google Forms
Roles: UX/UI Research and Design, Branding
BACKGROUND
Food waste is money waste. And it’s not just hurting your wallet - it’s also killing the planet.
First, let’s talk MONEY.
The US wastes about 30-40% of the entire food supply in the country each year.
Over 80% of Americans throw out food that’s actually still good just because they don’t fully understand the difference in the expiration labels, like “sell by” vs “best by”.
I’m not saying the wellbeing of our planet isn’t important - but the negative impact on your bank account is happening right now.
OnePoll conducted a study on 2000 Americans to find that the average American throws away $2798 worth of spoiled food every year!
And yes, throwing away food is literally killing the planet.
This is why food is the largest component of all the municipal solid waste in landfills.
These rotting foods lead to 11% of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions - increasing rates of global warming.
If 11% doesn’t seem like much… It’s the same as the greenhouse emissions of 37 million cars.
(Sources: RTS & World Wildlife Fund)
But with almost 35 million Americans suffering from food insecurity, WHY is there so much food - and money - being wasted?
The lack of organization in the fridge - forgetting that food is even there - is why food is thrown out 36% of the time.
More specifically, once out of sight, one-third of people forget they have leftovers sitting in their fridge.
(Sources: RTS & The New York Post)
Through some initial research and my own survey, it was discovered that despite many apps already targeting the goal of reducing food waste, the user’s problem wasn’t being solved.
These stats were startling - but did they really impact the day-to-day lives of the average person?
To find out, a survey was sent to 14 friends and family asking. 10 of them responded - 70% of whom said they would find use in an app that could help them not throw away their forgotten leftovers and other bought foods.
This made it clear there was still a problem despite the many apps already available (aka an opportunity).
The goal became talking to the people in my community to find out just how much these waste management issues impacted them personally.
RESEARCH
But simply sharing the stats wasn’t going to change anyone’s habits - so what methods could be used to encourage people to reduce their food waste?
To find out, the buying, cooking, and storing habits of US residents needed to first be uncovered.
Problem:
According to RTS, 30-40% of the US food supply is being wasted each year - with 43% of that coming from residential properties.
Research Objectives:
Determine the personal goals that avoiding food waste accomplishes for residents.
Understand how food waste impacts daily life.
Determine the habits that are leading to food waste.
Understand what methods residents may or may not already be using to the avoid food waste in their household.
The competitors all shared the same theme: one good feature just to have another one missing.
And none of them were attempting to help with the big issue of forgotten leftovers.
Weaknesses:
There are so many of these apps available, and while one app may offer a unique valuable feature, it also doesn’t offer another one. In fact, the only feature that all of these apps have in common is the necessary list of expiring items.
Not even all of them allow notifications of expiration dates to be sent to the user.
Therefore the user is faced with a bunch of different options, none of them truly standing out from the others.
Worst of all, the apps that seemed to have the most helpful features were also the ones in which its UI or functionality is nearly impossible to use and look at for long - especially those dealing with any sort of visual disabilities.
Opportunity:
The information that Americans have issues remembering their leftovers is easily accessible - strange how none of these competitors were targeting that issue.
Thus, a hypothesis formed: there was a user problem still undiscovered and therefore not being helped.
There are too many different kinds of living arrangements in the US - “residents” needed to be narrowed down to one specific group.
Single people who live on their own, households with strangers living together with a common area for cooking, families that have multiple generations all living in one household… The list could go on and on. There was no way find concrete answers through interviewing only 1 person from each different group. And there was no way there were enough resources or time available to find 3-5 people in each group either.
It was best to choose a small, contained group that I could easily access - single parents.
The reason they don’t like to waste food? Because of the money it wastes.
Saving the environment and helping hungry people doesn’t cross their mind until they’re tossing that untouched food away.
There was no correlation between how these 4 participants planned (or didn’t plan) their meals for the week.
Therefore, planning meals doesn’t help avoid food waste at all.
They do care about the environment, but they feel they’re already doing what they can to not waste food.
The problem is that food always ends up in the fridge or freezer to be forgotten until it’s not good anymore.
They cook extra on purpose so they don’t have to cook every night.
This leads to leftovers being thrown out once per week at minimum.
Having the time and mental capacity to focus on adapting portion control and remembering what’s still in the fridge or freezer isn’t happening with a full-time job and kids to tend to after work.
So even if they want to change how much food their wasting, it isn’t a top priority of their day.
Interviews were conducted with 4 single parents, and 5 main themes were found amongst the participants.
With these findings, it was now possible to determine the user and their problem, and start questioning how to solve it.
Single dad, determined to stay on budget
“It’s just me cooking now, but I want my kids to remember that we ate well and laughed together.”
Mark Reynolds
Background
Mark is a single dad in his late 30s. He splits custody with his ex-wife, so he doesn’t get to see his kids every day. When he does have them, he wants to spend as much time as he can with them. But he’s a busy guy and, like most people, he’s tired by the time he gets home from work – and the time and effort it takes to cook dinner is taking that time and energy away from his kids. But he knows it’s important to give the kids healthy meals, so he pushes himself to cook at home rather than going out. Not to mention going out is usually more expensive, and living on just his one paycheck now makes every penny count more than ever. And that’s why he doesn’t like throwing away food – he might as well have just thrown his money in the trash. But with balancing bills, his kids, and his job – all while trying to keep himself healthy and stressed as little as possible – also means that doing anything more than he’s already doing to avoid wasting food a low priority.
Motivations & Values
He wants to save as much money as he can so he can support his family with as little stress as possible.
He wants to spend time with his kids when he has them.
He wants to make sure he’s feeding his kids something healthy.
He values having something easy to make when he’s already tired from the rest of his busy day.
Frustrations & Pain Points
It’s hard to spend time with the kids when he’s already tired and now also has to cook dinner.
It gets boring eating the same foods all the time, leading to wasting food. But to avoid this, he’d have to spend time looking for new recipes and then spend money on these new foods with the risk of his family not liking it and it being wasted.
He’s already doing what he can to not waste food, and therefore his money, without being overwhelmed by it, but some waste can’t be helped when the only option at the store is a big container that he knows they won’t be able to eat all of before it’s bad.
Needs
Finding healthy food for an affordable price.
An easy, non-time consuming way to remember what food he has so it doesn’t get thrown out.
Foods that can be used more than once so he can cook only once and have a meal for at least one more day.
An easy, non-time consuming way to find new recipes that are using the same food he already knows his family will definitely eat.
Goals
Feeding his kids a healthy meal without spending a ton of money for it.
Using his money on other things that his family needs – not for food that ends up in the trash.
Being able to spend his time with his kids instead of in the kitchen cooking and cleaning every night.
How might we help single parents find avoiding their food waste more valuable so that it becomes one of their higher priorities?
How might we help single parents to consistently plan out their weekly meals more easily?
How might we help single parents remember the leftovers in their fridge so they don’t end up throwing it away and wasting the money they spent on that food?
If managing food waste didn’t take so much time and effort, users would be happy to not waste money on forgotten food.
By including a scanner, inputting all of their groceries from a receipt to an app will take mere seconds.
Figuring out what to eat for dinner often times isn’t thought of until it’s time to cook.
By providing recipes that are generated with only the foods on their list, users won’t have to think about it or worry that they’re missing an ingredient.
Other apps already notify users of grocery items expiring - but that doesn’t help once the food has been cooked and are now leftovers in the fridge.
By including not just a list for their grocery items - but also a separate list for their leftovers - users can be notified about both before they expire.
IDEATION, BRANDING, & UI DESIGN
Groceries List
For this list, there would need to be a way to access the scanner to add the items from a receipt, (as well as ways to add items manually, and to edit or delete items). But having many items can get disorganized and overwhelming quickly. To combat this, there would be tabs to see all items or to filter them based on where the item was being stored.
Recipes
This tab wouldn’t only allow users to generate the recipes, but give them a place to save the recipes they like as well as a way to add their own recipes that they might have saved on other recipe-finding websites or apps.
Leftovers List
The list for leftovers would be almost identical to the groceries list, but there would be no need for a scanner. However, the camera would still need to be accessible for the option to take a photo of the leftovers while manually inputting the item.
Account
Of course, users would need access to their account to see paid plans, settings, ways to contact the company, and to log out. There would also be a place to add additional storage locations in the case that users have more than one fridge or freezer.
The tasks I felt were most important to test with participants were based on the main selling points of the app:
The ability to add all items to the app at one time by scanning the receipt
Task: add items to the Groceries list by scanning a grocery receipt
The ability to generate recipes based only on the grocery items listed in the app
Task: generate recipes using certain tags to filter the results
The ability to list leftovers in order to be notified before they expire
Task: add an item to the Leftovers list, including taking a photo of them
Using fun colors to make things pop is usually a great idea, but after playing around with various color palettes, what matched the core brand values the most was to keep it simple with different shades of one color. Blues were of course considered, going along with the calming value, but this app is all about food and keeping it fresh - so greens made more sense when thinking about the things that go bad quickly, such as green veggies. And it also matched the resourceful value, like with the green recycling trucks, bins, and logos found throughout society.
Primary Colors
#E5F0E0
Secondary Colors
#D6E7CC
Neutral Color
#F9FAF8
#A8C686
#3C5D1F
Keeping things fresh… well it could’ve just been called “Keep Fresh”, but that feels more like a statement than a brand name. By swapping the words, the hope was to keep the app’s purpose intact while feeling like a modern brand.
The font style, Gafata, gives nature vibes while still keeping it simple and easy to read. Originally trying to incorporate vines into the logo eventually lead to the idea of grapes. Not only are grapes an item that goes bad more quickly, but it’s a unique food item to stand out from other brands.
(My process from sketches on paper to narrowing it down between multiple digital iterations.)
The core brand values that would help tie together all the elements of this app’s intended purpose were:
resourceful
simple
calming
practical
helpful
USER TESTING
All 4 participants rated each task as “very easy”.
But with 1 significant problem and 3 great suggestions by the participants, changes were needed to make the experience much better.
The 1st change was based on a significant problem discovered during the 2nd task of generating recipes.
While the task itself was easy to understand and perform, all of the participants thought the app would be generating random recipes instead of generating recipes based only on the ingredients listed in their Groceries tab. They all loved the idea of having only the recipes that they knew for sure they already had the ingredients for, so it was obvious that a change needed to be made to make this feature clear.
A toggle was added to allow users the option of generating recipes based on what they had or to generate any recipe in general.
Adding an “Expiring Soon” tag on the generation screen so users can choose to find recipes with the items they need to eat soon.
The suggestion to add an “Expiring Soon” tag wasn’t just a great idea, but it brought another issue up to the surface. It already felt like it wasn’t clear enough that users could enter their own categories, which would then be saved along with the ones already available.
Part of the confusion was from the wording - “Enter a TAG” was right under “Add a new CATEGORY”. What exactly was the difference?
And the placement of “Suggested Categories” hinted that the “Time of day” was mandatory even though it wasn’t.
Labels were moved around and reworded to make the understanding concrete.
No other problems arose, but the participants had a lot of suggestions on how to make the app even better. These were the suggestions that wouldn’t be too time consuming to make, but still quite helpful to the user’s experience.
Adding a filter so users can find certain kinds categories of their items and adding a search feature so users can find a specific item.
Hi-fidelity testing was overall successful, but 6 very simple changes were needed.
The filter was shifted.
The participants didn’t notice this feature was there.
The toggle design was changed to make the “on” state more clear.
The participants weren’t fully sure whether the toggle was on or off.
Everyone loved the branding and colors!
A short description was added to the “My Categories” section.
Not all the participants understood the purpose of this section.
A short description was added next to the “Cooking Mode” toggle.
Not all of the participants knew what a cooking mode is.
The Item Name field was moved down and…
The participants kept skipping over the Item Name because they didn’t feel it was as important as the other fields.
…the word “Optional” was added to the Item Name field.
Not all of the participants wanted to name their leftovers because they thought just the picture was good enough.
The participants were asked for their opinions on the brand name and logo. All 3 participants really liked the name, saying it gave a good understanding of what the app was for while still feeling unique. 2 of them also mentioned that the grape in the logo fit perfectly with the idea of keeping food fresh.
Although they weren’t asked about this, all 3 participants highly complemented the choice of colors, saying the different shades of green not only matched the fresh food theme, but felt the right level of simplicity. They also thought the shades were very easy to understand which feature they were currently using while not competing with the photos being used on the item cards.
FINAL RESULTS & NEXT STEPS
So, how is the Fresh Keep app helping users to:
find avoiding their food waste more valuable so that it becomes one of their higher priorities?
consistently plan out their weekly meals more easily?
remember the leftovers in their fridge so they don’t end up throwing it away and wasting the money they spent on that food?
Find out below!
Generating recipes based on chosen tags
The user finally has the groceries put away, but dinner still has to be cooked - and they haven’t even figured out what they want to make yet! They could use their little energy to stare at all the things they just bought and put something together, or…
They could simply go to their Fresh Keep app to find a recipe - based on the very items they just had the app input for them into their Groceries list. No more wondering if a tasty recipe will have a bunch of ingredients not in the house!
Adding items to the Groceries list by taking a photo of their grocery receipt
The user has just come from the store. They’re tired after work, but they still have to put up all the groceries and cook dinner. Who has time to also input every item they bought into an app? It might just be easier to keep it all in their head…
But when the user is able to quickly snap a picture of their receipt and let the app do the inputting work for them - knowing it will notify them before those items go bad - encourages them to do that one tiny, extra step that could save them over $2000 a year!
Adding an item to the Leftovers list, including taking a photo of them
That recipe sounded so good, the user made extra to have some again later in the week. But they don’t want to put their leftovers in the fridge and then find them hidden in the back a week from now. Especially when it’s hard to remember which leftovers are in which containers.
So they quickly snap a picture of the leftovers so that the app can notify them before they go bad. And since the picture includes the container, they won’t have to open everything to find it!
Next Steps
Ideally, it would be nice to have the same 3 participants test the iterated hi-fi wireframes to ensure the changes made have resolved any confusion.
Otherwise, these screens are ready for development as is.
REFLECTION
What went well:
With this project, many of the deliverables that I’ve struggled with in the past felt much easier and were approved much faster. Being able to see my own progress has been invaluable.
I received great participant feedback on a design decision that was a bit of a risk, but I felt it was the right decision for this brand. Sticking to my gut paid off - and that boosted my confidence in my skills!
Due to complications with participants cancelling user tests, I couldn’t finish my last project quickly. I decided to start this project in the meantime - but that eventually led to me working on 2 projects at once. Juggling my thought processes on 2 separate topics was a completely different kind of multitasking. But overcoming this new obstacle allowed me to get a taste of experiences I’m sure will come again as a designer so that next time I can be better equipped to handle it.
Over time, I’ve built a group of people willing to participate in my projects, and once it hit about 9 people, I stopped reaching out. By the time I started this project, 2 of them were no longer available to help. And then my group dwindled rapidly from 7 down to 3. It was just enough to get results, but it was frustrating to work with limited data. It taught me that I shouldn’t get comfortable - to always keep broadening my reach.
Challenges & lessons learned:
If you made it this far, you’re awesome -
Let’s talk!
Thank you for taking the time to read through this case study!!
Hopefully you’ve seen the potential you’re looking for and would like me to help you create a useful and thoughtful product for your users. If so…