Foodible
Smart AR based inventory tracking to minimise food waste in communal kitchens
Duration: 10 weeks
Team: Ruoxing You, Suizi Tian, Yuan Yao, Yuke Zhang, and me
So, what’s it all about?
About 13 million tons of food go to waste in the UK each year. How can we nudge people to keep track of perishable items? Foodible helps users manage and track their inventory using AR, empowering them to make sustainable choices by monitoring their carbon footprint..
I was responsible for conducting user research and usability testing for the app.
Here's a video that covers it all! Take a sneak peak here at the final solution!
Ideation
How might we reduce food waste by helping people track their food in a communal kitchen?
Brian is living in a student accomodation and sharing kitchen with 4 other flatmates.
He has one shelf in the common fridge. This is based on an understanding, not a clearly labelled system. His food ends up getting moved within shelves without him knowing or pushed to the back when others add their food to his shelf.
So, he forgets what is available in his fridge. Because of this, he ends up:
throwing away items that are expired.
ends up buying items in excess while shopping.
So, who are these people? Specifying target audience:
We narrowed down the target audience to two groups of users:
Professionals and students living independently in flat-sharing
Students in accommodations with shared facilities
We actively reflected, shared, and engaged as a team to explore challenges in maintaining sustainable food practices. This collaborative approach helped us align on a shared understanding of how sustainability can be integrated into the product design.
User Research
Goals:
Discover decision-making processes while buying food.
Identify pain-points of sharing kitchens with multiple people.
Understand difficulties with existing food-tracking systems.
Methods used:
Literature review + competitor audit + survey (35 participants) + semi-structured interviews (6 participants). I was responsible for pooling, analysing and collating insights from the data.
Key insights
I led the team to reflect on caregiving experiences and sketched initial ideas for 10-15 minutes based on the discussion. There were no constraints on imagining solutions at this stage.
People buy more because they often don’t remember what is in their fridge!
Errors in memory often lead to overbuying. Sometimes they are also bored with existing food causing for overbuying.Lack of clear storage system in communal fridges makes it harder to keep track of one’s items
The lack of organisation and labelling makes it hard for people to keep track of their items. This confusion results in food getting lost and wasted.Existing tracker apps require too much effort to input data without any useful feedback on expiry.
The existing app systems lack a way to track expiry dates for multiple items. People use it as a passive tool for listing food items only.
Based on this, we narrowed the scope of our problem to:
How might we reduce food waste by helping people track their food in a communal kitchen fridge?
This implied we were focussing on tracking perishable items like vegetables, fruits, milk etc. that are purchased more frequently and likely to be thrown away or wasted in a week.
Drawing up personas
Two personas were created based on research :
Working professionals are hedonistic and seek novelty while buying food - leading to overbuying unnecessary items in bulk.
Students are more chaotic with their storage practices and leading to forgetfulness and overbuying.
Design Process
Crazy 8s
The team generated initial ideas using Crazy 8s and debated over the aspects of designing the solution like viability, cost of adopting the product, etc.
Prioritisation matrix
Based on a 2x2 matrix based on motivation (high vs low) and usability (easy to use vs complex), the solutions that were too costly, bulky, difficult for communal use were weeded out.
This narrowed the solution space to making inventory management convenient. Two main scenarios for our design were finalized:
reminding the users of their existing stock
notifying users of expiry date to consume.
(illustration by Suizi)
Low fidelity prototypes
To identify the flow of user’s tasks and related functions, prototypes were made:
High fidelity prototypes
For the purpose of usability testing, interactive high fidelity prototypes were made.
Usability Testing
For the usability testing, we asked participants to think aloud and conducted a focus group session.
(Inclusion criteria — Participants living independently and a sharing fridge with at least 3 people)
Two scenarios were used with a high fidelity prototype of the app and paper glasses:
In the first scenario, the user had to add new food items to the inventory using scanner for QR codes and smart glasses.
In the second scenario, the user had to either share, dismiss or consume food items.
Key insights based on the feedback:
Ambiguity in food status
Issue: Users were confused about whether items in the app were consumed or expired due to unclear labeling.
Opportunity: Implement a clearer visual system with distinct labels or icons to differentiate between "Consumed" and "Expired" items. Additionally, use colour coding or status indicators to quickly convey the state of each item.
Carbon contribution and environmental impact was not relatable!
Issue: Participants expressed a strong preference for sorting items by expiration date, with those expiring soonest appearing at the top.
Opportunity: Default the item list to sort based on the time left until expiration (in descending order). Allow users to customise sorting options for flexibility, ensuring a more intuitive food management experience.Lack of relatability in carbon footprint metrics
Issue: Users found the carbon dioxide emission figures abstract and unrelatable, which reduced their motivation to adopt sustainable behaviors.
Opportunity: Introduce a more relatable metric for measuring environmental impact, such as equivalent car miles driven, trees planted, or days of household energy usage saved. This could encourage users to make more sustainable food choices by providing tangible, easy-to-understand feedback.
Final solution
Real-time inventory tracking while shopping
Users can seamlessly scan items using smart glasses or their phone’s camera. The Foodible app automatically syncs these items with the existing inventory and tracks their expiry dates.
Why is it important? Prevents overbuying by alerting users if an item already exists in their fridge, reducing food waste and saving money.
User Flow:
Scan Item: Users scan a product while shopping.
Real-Time Sync: The app checks the inventory and notifies if the item is already in stock.
Expiry Tracking: Newly scanned items are added to the inventory with automatic expiry date reminders.
Enhanced stock management
Users can tag food items for immediate use, set reminders, or share them with others to reduce waste.
Why is it important? Promotes smarter food management by reminding users to consume perishable items before they spoil.
User Flow:
Tag Items: Upon scanning, users can tag items as “Consume Soon,” “Remind Me Later,” or “Share with Friends.”
Timely Reminders: The app sends push notifications to remind users of items nearing expiry.
Track environmental impact and compete on sustainability
The app tracks how users' choices contribute to environmental sustainability by calculating the number of trees saved from reducing food waste.
Why is it important? Engages users with gamification elements like a leaderboard, encouraging them to make greener choices.
User Flow: Single carbon savings dashboard that allows users to track their sustainability contributions and compete with other community members to reach higher sustainability rankings.
