A solution to reducing food waste
Research: Gorilla Interviews
Our four person team conducted twenty-five gorilla interviews at shopping centers in San Francisco and throughout the East Bay. Participants varied in age and gender and were offered $5 gift card in exchange for the time they took to answer.
Participants were asked how frequently they cook, how often and what type of food waste they typically produce, and their current food sharing habits. They were also asked about their willingness to share food with people they know and don’t know.
Key Insights
Waste People don’t think of composting fruits and vegetables as wasting them.
Trust People are worried about food safety but willing to share food with people they trust.
Timing People don’t feel like they have enough time to participate in a food sharing program if it requires them to cook and deliver food.
“I would be willing to deliver food to someone if I have the time but I don’t think I would personally take food from someone I don’t know“
Feasibility
While our brainstorming session resulted in guerrilla potlucks as a primary design solution, we ultimately felt that it would be too difficult to address the main issues our research subjects voiced: food safety and trust. Ultimately, we decided that the “Craigslist for Food” idea was a better solution to address our participant’s concerns.
Design Solution
Pantry Pals, a food sharing app by proximity.
Pantry Pals reduces the obstacles of sharing by allowing you to easily post available food based on your location. The goal of the platform is to be the go-to app for those seeking to share, build community connections, and provide resources for those in need.
The platform allows users to easily post their food items, while ensuring strict requirements such as only posting unopened, non-expired and/or non-spoiled foods. It encourages users to build profiles and give kudos to each other in appreciation. Profiles of those posting are public, with a recorded history of their past shares.
To prevent stigmatization, those who are food insecure and seeking food can contact sellers anonymously. This allows the app to keep a record of them, while protecting their privacy.
Scenario & User Story
Mary opens her cabinet and realizes she has a lot of extra staples after shopping at Costco. She wants to make room in her cabinet but feels bad about throwing anything away. She is a parent and hates the thought of another family going hungry when she is wasting food. She googles “Food Pick Up Services”. She wants something convenient, that requires very little effort since she’s a busy mom. She stumbles across the food sharing app and is interested since she’s active in her community and passionate about helping others.
She opens the app and enters her zip code, excited to see if people in her area are using it. She sees activity in her area and wonders if it’s anyone she knows. She’s more comfortable sharing with people she knows then strangers. She sees activity in her area and gets excited about the idea of scoring or trading her food for something she needs. She selects “add” and sees the food requirements. She’s happy to know that someone is moderating this site and there are rules for food safety. She takes photos of the food she’s giving away with her phone and uploads them, happy to have a convenient way to share her extras.
Competitor Analysis
During the research phase, I discovered the competitor app Olio. A food sharing platform based in England with few users in the San Francisco Bay Area.
Reviewing the app, I found:
- Some of the images posted by users were poorly taken, making the food look unappealing.
- Some of the food posted is open or partially used, which brings up food safety issues.
- Because the app isn’t popular locally, I worried about the age of food posted.
Takeaways
Whole Foods Prevent users from posting open/partially eaten food
Fresh Foods Allow users to set expiration dates for postings
Beautiful Foods Restrict visual weight of user photos in the platform
Wireframes
I sketched the two key user flows necessary for Pantry Pals: users posting food and the user finding food. I explored options that ensured timeliness of posting, while incorporating food requirements such as restrictions and expiration dates. For those searching for food, I felt it was important to explore options that allowed the searcher to find options based on location and proximity.
Prototypes & Testing
I created a paper and digital prototypes to test with six users. All users were told Pantry Pals is an application to allow people to share and find food in their neighborhoods – similar to craigslist, only focused on food. They were asked to follow the user seeking food flow and told that their goal is to find organic cherries within a 15 miles radius.
During the testing phase, users said the large images on the home page feed required too much scrolling. They also wanted to look at multiple photos for each listing without clicking on the listing.
Conclusions
Based on the feedback from my users, I decided to make the following design changes:
- Reduce the amount of content on the main home page feed but add a favorite button and a message button to each listing.
- Incorporate horizontal swiping interactions to the images of listings.
Final Product
Time Efficiency Through Proximity
Pantry Pals has an emphasis on proximity and a main feature of the application is the map. This is a feature built out primarily to assist those who are seeking food in finding it quickly and with limited resources. The approximate distance from each posting is indicated using the orange overlay.
User Interface
Pantry Pal has a simple white and tangerine interface to reflect the app’s emphasis on food without conflicting with the images uploaded by users. Each item is displayed as a card, reflect the object from which it represents. Because of the variable quality of the image, the typography of each listing is large while the image is small. This encourages the user to imagine the item, rather than focus on the actual image shown.
