Revamping leftover food waste
Tackling food waste by recommending recipes based on leftover ingredients in the household fridge.
Deliverables
User flow
Visual guidelines
Wireframing
Prototyping
Tools Used
Figma
Duration
36 hours
Team
2 designers (including me) and 2 developers
Problem
Learning about the impact of sustainable businesses and causes was definitely a driving factor behind our project. Conducting this research made us focus our issue on food waste. It has become a global problem that has left scars on our climates.
931 million tonnes of food go to waste each year.
61% of this food waste comes from households.
This problem is—a lot of the food waste doesn’t come from restaurants or retailers or other people —it comes from our households. Extra ingredients accumulate, expire, and get lost in the back of pantries, finding themselves in the trash can instead of on our dinner plates.
How might we transform the habit of wasting food in the household to a more sustainable way of eating?
Tackling food waste with leftover ingredients
Our website aims to tackle food waste by recommending recipes based on leftover ingredients in the fridge at home. We keep track of fresh produce and plan meals before ingredients are about to go bad and turn into waste. In return, users can enjoy meals that are catered to their eating lifestyles without having to worry about meal planning or discarding excess food.
Diving into the issue
Before we dived into designing the product, we wanted to gain a deeper understanding of the issue. The most suitable option was to conduct secondary research given the timeframe that we had. Based on this research, we found the main causes of food loss and waste:
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Food spoilage
About two-thirds of food waste at home is due to food not being used before it goes bad.
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Poor planning
Consumers often make inaccurate estimates of what and how many ingredients they will use during the week. Unplanned restaurant meals or food delivery can also lead to food at home going bad before it can be used.
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Overbuying
Consumers buying food at the grocery store, particularly when there's a sale, and throwing the surplus away.
Brainstorming
Referring to the analysis we made, we brainstormed as a team possible features that could be incorporated to our solution. We used a dot voting system to identify the features we agreed on and discussed why we picked those ideas.
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User flow
We had difficulties picturing how the features we wanted to implement would tie together. After bouncing back on discussions and feedback, we formed a general flow to show how we would welcome users onto our platform.
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Branding
We were inspired by apps and websites other designers created on the web that were also food-related. Since our goal is to promote sustainability, as a team we agreed that colors symbolizing nature and calmness was something we wanted to continue forward with our branding. We created a design system to maintain consistency.
Mid fidelity wireframes
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Prototype
Food Savor turns your extra ingredients into colorful and creative meals, allowing anyone to contribute towards reducing food waste without leaving their kitchen.
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Record you dietary needs and restrictions
Each person has their own food preferences and restrictions. Food Savor recommends recipes with these factors in mind.
Keep a record of ingredients
Users can document leftover ingredients in their fridge and discover new recipes to try out sustainably.
Recommend meals based on preferences and sustainability
Users can select their favorite recipes based on the given recommendations.
Display an overview of the recipe with step-by-step instructions
View the recommended recipes to see a summary of the ingredients, steps and estimated cooking time.
Takeaways from this project
Prioritizing the main features
During the hackathon, our team brainstormed features that each had their own potential. Given the time scope that we had, we had to take a step back, identify the key features that strongly linked back to our problem set, and worked our way from there.
Stepping out into a new environment
I decided to push myself by collaborating with developers and designers I met for the first time. It turned out to be a great experience, we all communicated our expectations and goals then set tasks based on our skill sets.
Implementing mobile screens
If I had more time to work on this project, I would design this to be mobile-friendly. This concept will benefit strongly from people who prefer using smaller devices when following a recipe.
