Designing a meal planning app to help reduce food waste.
Overview
My role: UX Designer and Project Coordinator
Time frame: 5 Weeks
Tools used: Miro, Adobe XD
Households purchase and waste too much food because they don’t plan how they are going to use it and when. Could an app that makes meal planning and shopping lists easy and fun to use and share, help support households in reducing the amount of food they purchase and waste?
Using the design thinking process I empathised with users, performed research and brainstormed before creating low-fidelity wire frames to test.
Methods used:
- A literature review
- Competitive review
- A participant screener/semi-scripted remote user interviews
- The 5 why's and tell me more techniques
- Divergent thinking technique
- Usability testing of low-fidelity wireframes
Research
Assumptions about the users’ needs provided a basis to start from and identified the following research objectives:
- Who wastes the most food in the UK and Norway?
- What type of food do they waste most and why?
Competitor review & testing
A review of two competitor apps helped to define the user model as well as identify any design patterns, user flows, concepts, ideas and solutions already established. Design opportunities revealed included:
- Clear, large icons and text when choosing ingredients / filtering
- Endorsements by well-known chefs
- Good recipe database
- Inspires those who don’t enjoy cooking or don’t know what to make
- More detailed categories, for example allergies
- Expand beyond just plant-based recipes
Insights
People purchase food on impulse and are easily influenced by,
for example messages of scarcity, BOGOFs, 3 for 2 offers as well as what they see or hear other people buy.
If people shop when they are hungry they purchase more.
Insights from user interviews
Pain Points
- Time
- Miscommunication
- Eating the same meals all the time
- Children wasting food
- Buying unripe fruit then forgetting about it
Goals
- To waste less food
- To try new things
Motivations
- To easily plan new meals
- To try new meals without the worry of wasting food or money
- To easily update and communicate a shopping list between family members
Defining the problem
Young professionals and families in Norway and the UK are wasting food because they aren’t planning their meals.
Work With Us
Insights from user interviews
Pain Points
- Time
- Miscommunication
- Eating the same meals all the time
- Children wasting food
- Buying unripe fruit then forgetting about it
Goals
- To waste less food
- To try new things
Motivations
- To easily plan meals
- To try new meals without the worry of wasting food or money
- To easily update and communicate a shopping list between family members
