The Smart Fridge Experience
Role: UX Research, UX Design | Time: Two Weeks | Tools: Adobe XD, Google Sheets, Google Forms
Project Brief
The assignment's initial goal was to create a unique experience that displays how the interfaces of a watch, mobile phone, and fridge will interact with each other. We were given the option to choose between two personas—A or B—or create our own.
Requirements:
A problem to solve
An experience that bridges the three platforms
Visual examples of each interface
01. Understand
The Challenge
After some initial research, specifically into consumer behavior in grocery stores and food waste in America, I created a challenge for myself:
"It is estimated that US households waste 76 billion pounds of food per year, approximately 40% to 50% of food waste nationwide. On average, a person wastes 238 pounds of food per year, wasting not only 21% of the food they buy, but approximately $1,800 per year, as well."
Design an experience that helps to reduce food waste by consumers.
Secondary Research
To start off, in order to understand the problem more fully, I did some research into current research studies on food waste and consumer behavior. This initial look culminated in many assumptions and points of opportunity that allowed me to move forward confidently.
Key Findings
The majority of relevant data came from FoodPrint's The Problem with Food Waste:
US households are the biggest culprits, contributing to a staggering 76 billion pounds of food waste annually, as estimated by ReFED.
Approximately 40% to 50% of food waste happens at the consumer level.
On a personal level, the average American wastes 238 pounds of food each year, translating to a hefty $1,800 in annual expenses.
Fresh fruits and vegetables account for the most significant loss at the consumer level (19% of fruits and 22% of vegetables, 41% total), followed by dairy (20%), meat (21%), and seafood (31%).
Major contributors to household food waste include:
Food Spoilage: Two-thirds of food at home spoils due to improper storage, lack of visibility in refrigerators, partially used ingredients, and misjudged food needs,
Over Prepping: One-third of food is wasted due to cooking or serving too much food, typically leading to more food than can be finished,
Data Label Confusion: 80% of Americans toss food out before its expiration date due to label confusion (e.g., "sell by,” "best if used by,” "expires by," etc.),
Overbuying: Sales and promotions that encourage buying in bulk lead to consumers purchasing food items that they don't usually eat or plan for, and
Poor Planning: Consumers often misjudge how much food they'll need before grocery trips and purchase too much that goes to waste
The following goals were identified
01.
Contribute to the solution of a larger problem
Food waste is a global issue - let's do our part to pave the way towards improved food sustainability.
02.
Educate users on best practices
Educating users in various areas of opportunity—such as clarifying the meaning of data labels—could reduce food waste by more than 20%.
03.
Create a multi-platform experience
An experience that is integrated into the user's life—a smart watch, phone, or fridge—or can be used interchangeably between the three.
The Problem Statement
How might we make users aware of their contributions to and facilitate the reduction of nationwide food waste?
Insights & Opportunities
Through this initial research, various potential opportunities started to come out. Not all are reflected in this study, but all are worthy of being validated by potential users. The ones listed here are some of the ones found during this Understand phase and were kept in mind throughout the entirety of the Research phase.
02. Research
Methodology
What I learned about the users and potential uses for the app is a result of qualitative and quantitative research gathered using the following methods:
Desk Research
Food Waste in the US
Evaluated research studies that examined the food waste issue at a larger scale and proposed potential solutions
User Surveys
User Behavior
Synthesized user surveys to understand basic user behavior when grocery shopping as well as when met with expiring food
User Persona
Needs and Motivations
Developed a persona based on user research, conversations, and assumptions
03. Analysis
Desk Research
On top of the initial research done to understand the project, I did more research into food waste and consumer behavior. Data comes from Unilever, World Resources Institute, Sustainable Development Goals, and the United States Department of Agriculture.
Food Waste
There is more than enough food to feed the world, but 821 million people still lack fulfilling meals.
A third of the food produced globally is lost or wasted.
We cannot achieve a sustainable global food system without addressing food waste.
Food waste contributes largely to climate change - about 8-10% of global greenhouse gas emissions.
Food waste costs the global economy around $940 billion each year. Reducing this waste is a significant business opportunity, valued at $405 billion.
Should the global population reach 9.6 billion people by 2050, it would require the equivalent of three planets to provide the necessary resources to sustain current lifestyles.
Consumer Behavior
From 2004-07 to 2014-17, the share of Americans who shopped for groceries on an average day was about 14%. However, the time Americans spent shopping for groceries grew by 6%, from 43.2 minutes to 46.0 minutes.
This longer period could reflect larger stores and longer aisles, more significant quantities of food items to choose from, and more interest in comparing prices or nutritional aspects, among other factors
On average, more women shop for groceries than men (17% versus 10%), and women spend more time shopping than men (47.6 and 43 minutes, respectively).
User Surveys
The goal of the survey was to gather data on basic user behavior. What are their shopping habits like? How much of their purchased food items go to waste? What do they do with foods that are near their expiration date? Questions like these helped create assumptions that led to different points of opportunity.
Takeaways and Opportunities
User Persona
After synthesizing all the data, patterns and assumptions were gathered to create the user persona, Olive:
Olive is a Seattle-based Marketing Director with a newfound interest in reducing her footprint towards food waste as much as possible and as conveniently as possible. Her solution to this needs to not only account for her family but for their health and nutrition, as well. The process needs to fit well with her busy work-life schedule, so a streamlined meal-prepping process is a must. She doesn't have much time to go grocery shopping multiple times on a biweekly period, so she needs a way to track what she already has and remove too much thinking on her part from the meal planning process.
Key Findings
The major findings for this project, and the ones reflected in the Design phase, were:
01.
How might we facilitate the grocery list creation process?
02.
How might we make purchasing the listed food items easier?
03.
How might we facilitate keeping track of food items in the fridge?
04.
How might we facilitate the meal prep / cooking process?
Hypothesis Statement
We can make users more aware of their contributions to and facilitate the reduction of nationwide food waste by providing them with a list of recipes based on items in their fridge that they can use to plan their groceries and meals plans around.
04. Design
User Flows
The following user flows are representative of the major key findings and the hypothesis statement. They demonstrate the steps a user would take throughout a multi-platform experience and provide an explanation for what the user is meant to see and do in each step.
01.
Create Your Grocery List
SMART PHONE
The user creates a grocery list based on different recipes recommended by the app that take into account the items the user currently has in their fridge / pantry
03.
Add Food to Fridge
SMART FRIDGE
The user is able to input the item data of the foods they purchased into their smart fridge, including things like brand, size, amount, nutrition, expiration date, etc.
02.
Purchase Groceries
SMART WATCH
The user has their grocery list available on their watch, creating a hands-free experience that doesn't require them to check their phone or paper notes constantly
04.
Cook Recipe
SMART WATCH
The user has their recipe available on their watch in an easily viewable, step-by-step format, creating a hands-free experience that allows them to move around more freely
01. Create Your Grocery List - Smart Phone
User Flow
Wireframes
02. Purchase Groceries - Smart Watch
User Flow
Wireframes
03. Add Food to Fridge - Smart Fridge
User Flow
Wireframes
04. Cook Recipe - Smart Watch
User Flow
Wireframes
05. Conclusion & Next Steps
There’s a lot of opportunity in this venture to do good on a global scale. From the bit of research that was done, it’s obvious that this is a problem worth looking into and doing my part in trying to solve. I’d like to start the design process from the beginning and go more in-depth into each step, especially the user research phase to ensure the app becomes something that people would benefit from.
I believe this app could be both helpful and educational, with the goal of showing users what they could do to improve the larger food waste issue through proper meal planning, food storage, data label clarity, etc. I'd like to spend more time working on these aspects of the app in order to create something meaningful and worthwhile.
As well, I'd like to create an app that is visually pleasing in order to create a sort of fun and quirky environment for users to learn in.