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Mobile app that allows users to track their groceries and waste produced to encourage more environmentally-friendly and sustainable habits.
As part of my participation in the Design for America organization, I collaborated with a team to ideate, design, and prototype the app. My roles included market research, user interviews, and designing the pitch deck and UI mockups.
Duration: Sep-Dec 2020.
Tools: Figma, Sketch.
The problem.
- How might we give our target audience actionable steps to reduce their waste?
- How might we have an impact on our audience such that they easily/effortlessly spread their knowledge to others?
- How might we ensure that our target audience is committed to reducing food waste in the long term?
Team motivations/anecdotes.
In my dorm at HS we had a really great trash sorting system with include landfill, recycling, and compost––so much of the “landfill” waste in USC dorms are actually food waste that should be composted but is instead sent to the landfill
In an environmental science class I took in HS, we learned that “compostable” to-go containers aren’t actually as environmentally friendly as they seem––the majority require a specific digesting machine to breakdown the fibers, and without the machine they will take nearly as long as other landfill items to decompose
Secondary research.
85% of food wasted in the US is from consumer-facing businesses and homes (ReFED)
Food packaging waste going up right now because of COVID
Not only the food but the resources that go into producing that wasted food also go to waste
Labels like “sell by”, “use by”, “expires on”, “best before” or “best by” are confusing to people — and in an effort to not risk the potential of a foodborne illness, they’ll just toss it in the garbage.”
Additional considerations.
Is “compostable packaging” actually better for the environment?
What resources would we need to create/develop/integrate a composting system at USC?
How can we create more sustainable/reusable food packaging while still ensuring COVID safety measures?
Education on food management - cooking, grocery shopping, meal planning, (managing personal finances) - how do each of these steps contribute to food waste?
Problem space.
In the US:
30-40% of food goes to waste
80 billion lbs of food are thrown away each year
80% of Americans discard food based on misunderstanding of expiration labels
Target demographic.
College students interested in reducing food waste but are unsure how. Mostly Gen Z users who are tech-savvy and pays attention to current happenings; passionate about sustainability but is still learning about a greener, more eco-friendly lifestyle and would want guidance.
User research.
By conducting live user interviews and facilitating focus groups, we wanted to gauge our target demographic as well as their level of existing knowledge and pain points. We also wanted to understand where our users’ information intake were generally concentrated in so that we could find the most intuitive outlet for them to integrate into their habits.
L: research outcomes; R: example transcript from an interview
The solution.
From the primary and secondary research, we narrowed down the focus of our app by first doing some competitive analysis of the potential solutions we had ideated through some brainstorming sessions. By integrating with users’ existing browsing habits and patterns of web/phone usage, Weco could intuitively prompt them to begin tracking their groceries and waste. Also, we wanted the app to “nudge” users toward actionable daily steps that would encourage them to be interested in this issue, since our user research showed that most of our target demographic were not cognizant of it to begin with. Hence why we chose to integrate through social media, existing facilities, or the iOS interface so that the alerts could subconsciously trickle into users’ everyday interactions.
Ideation
Main goals.
Competitive analysis.
Pros:
Scan barcodes on items to create entries
Heavy details on each entry
Other features: shopping list, tracking % usage to calculate value loss
Cons:
Time-consuming to log each item manually
Lack of reward system to acknowledge growth and encourage use
The product.
App demo.
Iteration process.
Dashboard.
On the dashboard, we have included widget-like layouts of our main features like the point reward system, daily fact, and grocery tracker. These most important pieces of information are presented to users at-a-glance, and update constantly to warn users of personalized alerts like the expiration time of certain items.
Community forum.
In the community forum, users can find the resource guide, where there are short but sweet step-by-step tutorials that give an overview of topics that pertain to eco-friendly lifestyles like recycling, sorting trash, and sustainability. Users can also post on the forum to chat about questions they may have or simply to build bonds in the community of users.
Receipt scanner.
The receipt scanner feature allows users to scan their receipt to more conveniently input their new groceries and number of items into the app. The app can convert the text and numbers into columns, and we could utilize API’s and/or databases that are readily available to get an average expiration time for these items. Users can then add to the list or edit the auto-generated data to make them more accurate.
Secondary features.
Our secondary features include the weekly breakdown, which produces a weekly report that congratulates the user on their growth along criteria like the money they saved and waste reduced. These points allow us to create a reward system that encourages rather than punishes the user for positive behavior so that it creates an uplifting environment for users to want to continue their growth.
We also included a suggested recipe section that works along with the grocery tracker functionality. When certain groceries on the users’ list are about to expire, the system searches through the web to recommend recipes to them that could help them use up such ingredients in one go. For instance, if a user’s bananas and milk are about to reach their expiration dates, Weco might suggest a banana bread recipe to them!
Onboarding.
The onboarding flow allows users to sign up and log in with their usernames, passwords, and phone number. We designed it so that users could also optionally input their age, height, and weight so that Weco could use this information to train its algorithm and give more personalized, accurate suggestions regarding the amount of groceries that the user should buy (i.e. to help people not overbuy and produce more waste).
Prototype.
Additional options.
We also came up with the idea of iOS widgets that include some key bits of information as daily reminders for users that they can use to even more conveniently check their groceries or learn about the green lifestyle simply from their homepage.
Additionally, we mocked up a design of a tote bag with actionable steps to reducing waste and a QR code to introduce people to our app. Not only could we use this as a promotional piece, the product helps promote both our message and our app in a way that educates people the information in a digestible way. We also chose the medium of a fabric tote bag made from recyclable material, because we hoped that it would replace the plastic bags that people normally use when shopping at supermarkets.
