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Time: 1 week
My role: Research, Product concept, Personas, Architecture, Wireframes, UI, Prototyping
An accompaniment app for a smart fridge that helps in reducing food waste.
Tech feasibility is not an issue. The only limitation is the one-week deadline.
That the fridge is able to scan and measure every product that is inside it, thanks to in-built cameras and shelf scales.
This includes knowing information such as:
• What products are stored
• Exact measures in grams
• When the product is due to expire
• Who use which product, due to face recognition
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Methods
- 1 x Survey
- 9 x User interviews
- 1 x Competitor analysis
Key lines of enquiry
- How do people shop?
- How do people plan their meals?
- When do people skip their meals?
- Why do people throw out food?
- How people organise the time for meals?
- How food can be saved?
1. People who end up throwing out food are often single people and those who don't like to cook. They feel inspired in the store when they see the food and feel good about the idea of having a meal, but later they tend to forget about it
Problem:
Motivation
1. Inspire people to cook and use their food even if they don’t have an idea for it or are not in the mood
2. People don’t know how much they are using, so they over purchase and end up with too much food in the fridge
Problem:
Plan shopping
2. Help people plan and purchase their food more accurately
3. People often buy with the intention of cooking, but then end up doing something else because their plans have changed
Problem:
Time for cooking
3. Make sure that people put aside enough time to cook, eat and enjoy the food they buy
4. People end up with odds, ends and leftovers in their fridge or freezer that they don’t know what to do with
Problem:
Use leftovers
4. Help people find something to do with their leftovers
I wanted to show that cooking is a fun and soul nourishing thing, that brings comfort.
As the main colours I used slightly off white and black. The accompanying colour is orange, and I used a few versions of it where possible to create a sense of warmth. As a contrast, I would use blue of a classic Smeg retro fridge.
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They could have been quickly drawn like a kid’s picture you put on the fridge.
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Permanent Marker is very casual and makes me think of writing shopping lists. Helvetica is referring to Smeg’s logo.
The home screen has 4 most used functions on the top, things to discover on the bottom and an encouraging statement.
To inspire people to cook the app has plenty of recipes to choose from. Users are able to browse and choose recipes by 4 categories. Then the app will create a meal plan based on what they like
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Help reducing waste by amending shopping list if people are over buying
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Making shopping easier by making it automatic
Start planning meals by
setting a time for them
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Organise daily tasks with help of reminders of coming up meals
Connect with calendar and app will assess the time for meals based on provided preferences
App reacts to changing plans in the calendar and lets the user choose the action or does adjustments on its own
Connect with apps that help to donate food
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Look for opportunities in the calendar to use frozen meals
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Suggest recipes that include ingredients that are about to go off, if not used they can be donated
Methods
- 7 x usability tests
Key lines of enquiry
- Is app easy to use?
- What functions did you like?
- What other functions would you add?
- Would you use this app?
Users were interested in the app and potential benefits beyond just reducing food waste. Ideas that could be developed are budgeting and counting calories. Users expressed that they want to be able to manage what notifications they are receiving and to be able to add their own recipes. What still needs to be resolved is how the app is maintaining the ingredients that are not kept in the fridge but have to be used in the recipes.
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