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Food Saver
Timeline
Tools
February - April 2024 (3 months)
Figma, Adobe Illustrator
Role
UX Researcher;
UI Designer for Meal Planning Task
PROBLEM
Singaporean households generate excessive food waste.
On average, food waste makes up half of the 1.5 kg of waste generated by each household daily (The Straits Time, 2024). Most of this food waste is avoidable with better planning and greater awareness of food management.
SOLUTION
Meal Planner
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Daily recipe addition/suggestion feature to plan meals ahead of time and generate a list of groceries that have to be purchased for the week
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Upvote feature to allow different members of a household to indicate meal preference
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Prevents overbuying
Smart storage
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Storage system that makes grocery storage clearly visible and tracks amounts available
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Automated reminder for items that are expiring soon
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Prevents food wastage due to forgetfulness and duplicate purchases
Ingredients mix-and-match
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AI-generated recipes based on leftover ingredients in storage
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Personalised meal inspirations
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Encourages the utilisation of available ingredients
APPROACH
01
Research
Contextual Inquiry
User Interviews
02
Define
Affinity Diagram
Personas
Empathy Maps
User Journey Map
03
Design
How Might We?
Site Maps
Wireframing
Hi-fi Prototype
04
Evaluate
Usability Test
Heuristic Evaluation
Scenarios
Storyboards
CONTEXTUAL INQUIRY & USER INTERVIEWS
Interviewees only use their memory to keep track of food purchases and storage
The team met with individuals who fit the characteristics of our target user groups to investigate their food-related habits and preferences.
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Primary users: Adults aged 25 to 55 who often store food items and prepare food for a family
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Secondary users: Young adults aged 18 to 25 who often store food items and prepare food for themselves
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We engaged 3 primary users and 3 secondary users and employed the following methods to gain insights:
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Contextual inquiry
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​​​We followed the users as they shopped for groceries, arranged the items in their storage and prepared meals to learn about their current practices of food management
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Using the master-apprentice model, we asked questions along the way to prompt the user to explain the rationale behind their behaviours
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User Interview
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Questions asked include:
- ​How often do you go grocery shopping?​
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How do you keep track of expiry dates?
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Where and how do you store your groceries?
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Do you have any system to help you decide which food items to use when cooking?
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AFFINITY DIAGRAMMING
INSIGHTS
Food waste is most often generated when users fail to remember what they have in storage or when items expire unexpectedly
The user research and affinity diagram helped us ascertain that most food waste is generated due to perishables like vegetables and fruits going bad unexpectedly and users forgetting about certain items in storage. Users seldom use external tools to help them keep track of the items in storage.
Memory
Most users rely only on their memory to keep track of items in storage
Certain items may expire sooner than users realise
Social
Food storage and preparation can be social, where users would consult others around them
People around users are often involved in the planning of meals and purchases
PERSONAS, EMPATHY MAPS AND JOURNEY MAPS
Using the insights, we created two personas to capture the characteristics of the primary and secondary target user groups. To fully illustrate these personas, we also created empathy maps and user journey maps that would guide our design of the solution.
Primary Persona
Primary Empathy & Journey Maps
Secondary Empathy Map
Primary Persona
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WIREFRAMES
We created 2-3 sets of wireframes for each of the 3 main tasks we'd identified to explore how best to design the final product.
Task 1
Task 2
Task 3
Task 1
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SITE MAPS
Following a review of the various versions of wireframes, we decided to split the first task into 2 parts to make the user flow clearer. To seamlessly connect the different tasks, we created site maps for each task before beginning to work on the hi-fi prototype.
Task 1 - Grocery Shopping
Task 2 - Meal Planning
Task 4 - Cooking
Task 1 - Grocery Shopping
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IMPROVEMENTS
Through 2 stages of usability testing and 1 round of heuristic evaluation, our hi-fi prototype went through a few changes.
FINAL DESIGN
INTERACTIVE PROTOTYPE
STYLE GUIDE
REFLECTIONS
If we had more time...
I really ​enjoyed working on this project, especially because I got to work with 3 other extremely enthusiastic UI/UX designers. We had a great time bouncing ideas off each other and creating a prototype that flowed well across different parts. That said, given the short time frame, there are a few improvements that could be done moving forward:
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Prioritising the 'social' function. While making the app social was a shared consensus among the team members, we focused on the main tasks related to food rather than the social feature. More can be done to design the user experience of adding different family members or even friends into the same 'foodspace,' much like inviting a collaborator on any Google workspace.
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A more robust style guide. While we established a consistent colour palette and some elements across the whole product, internal consistency can be improved. For instance, the design of many elements such as buttons and information cards can be standardised across different tasks.
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Even more user control and freedom. Especially for my own part (meal planning), I would wish to include more dynamic representations of the calendar. For instance, I would want to explore including a monthly view, or adding sections to differentiate between breakfast, lunch and dinner.
CONCLUSION
Thanks for reading!
If you're interested, feel free to look at my other projects!
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