Magic Pantry
Design sprint for reducing food waste.
The Magic Pantry is a mobile app designed to mitigate household food waste that empowers users to contribute their leftovers for reusing it towards other recipes or disposal; earning points with each submission.
This app not only targets sustainable living and waste reduction, but it also allows users to personalize their experience by using earned points to customize their in-app avatar, a cat. Yes… a cat.
My Role: UX/UI Designer and Researcher
Team: Design Sprint Team
Duration: Aug 2023, One Week
Tools: Figma, Canva, & Sketch
Designed For: Android (Mobile)
What’s the Problem?
The impact of food waste on our environment is another reason to adopt preventive food waste habits. Nearly half of all fruits & vegetables produced globally are wasted each year.
In developed countries, larger quantities of food than needed are produced, the cost of discarding products can be cheaper than using or reusing food, and with the abundance of food a general attitude exists that people can afford to waste food.
What’s the Solution?
My design sprint team collaborated on a means to create a digital solution on how can we help individuals reduce their food waste using modern technology. Not only did we think of how can we encourage users to contribute to sustainable living, but how can we make it fun?
In doing so, we designed an app that lets users submit and organize their purchased groceries and encouraging them to reuse these groceries before their expiration date through positive reinforcement.
Secondary Research
Some facts and figures to add context
Food waste happens at various levels and affects everyone, whether they know it or not. Grocery stores carry large quantities of food to meet expectations therefore many products reach their sell-by date. Over a third of all food produced (-2.5 billion tons) is lost or wasted every year.
The annual consumer waste levels ranges from 95-115 kg in Europe and North America (per capita). The cost of food losses and waste is approximately $650B and $310B in developed and developing countries.
“For most of history, the line between the edible and the inedible has been left incontrovertibly to the eye of the beholder.”
- Tamar Adler
Goal Setting
What impact did we want to achieve?
We wanted the entire team to be aligned with one goal in mind. So my team and I sat down and brainstormed a couple of goals we thought would align best with what impact we were trying to accomplish. After a long collaboration session, we arrived at our chosen goal, wrote it down, and made it visible.
We chose this goal as our primary target because as a team we strongly believed that it reflected our team’s principles and aspirations.
Solution Sketches
Prototypes
Where ideas become high-fidelity
Brainstorm Goals
Chosen Goal
To visually predict and explore our user’s interaction with Magic Pantry, we explored the idea of it being a movie, moving through the product scene by scene and mapping out the visuals and interactions.
By making this storyboard we were provided with a lens that allowed us to develop a narrative around the experience and how someone would use our product. Not only did we capture moments and relate to the user in the process, but we also communicated our ideas and explored the holistic experience of Magic Pantry.
1 - Scan and submit items with the option to edit quantity if needed.
2 - Select items you wish to use towards your recipes or discard them then view how many points you’ve received.
3 - Redeem your points, select customization options to personalize your avatar, and view what impact you’re having on food waste real time.
Quotes from users
Key Learnings
Did I mention this was my first design sprint ever? With this being my first sprint and only having five days to complete this, not only did I learn that teamwork really does make the dream work but also how to properly manage my time.
Since Magic Pantry was so fast paced, we used that as a motivator critically think and decide on only the most important designs and features.
% of Food Waste
To allow users to set realistic goals in reducing food waste and suggest achievable solutions.
To provide our community with the long term effects of food waste, how it affects us directly and personally, and figure out ways to diminish it as much as possible.
To teach and encourage individuals about simple actions that can have significant impacts on food waste reduction and at-home-savings at the same time.
To create a community snapshot of what its waste behaviors are and build goals from those insights.
To inform users on how food waste can be reduced at the individual level by suggesting achievable solutions, use that data to create a snapshot of their community, and to provide them with meaningful personal KPI’s on how much impact they are having; money they are saving.
How Might We help grocery shoppers better utilize their leftovers so they can reduce food waste in their household?
Storyboarding
The art of storytelling.
My team and I created our high-fidelity prototypes so that we can better represent our task flow and bring our idea to life. The high-fidelity screens add more context to our storyboard where you can visualize how our user will scan their groceries, add them to their pantry where they will be reminded of their expiry, use their leftovers towards other recipes or discard them, then finally using their points for customization.
Once our user continues to use Magic Pantry, they will have an option to save recipes they used with their leftovers since they might come back to them later.
Scan a receipt:
5/5 completed successfully
Found information and items list easy to read
Appreciated usefulness of scanning the receipt
Increased awareness of expiring items
Redeem points and customize
5/5 completed successfully
Liked game oriented design and productivity pet
Found the process fun
Testing was 100% successful with 5/5 participants completing each task!
Next Steps
Collaborate with content creators who share similar goals.
Prolonged improvement based on more user testing and research.
Community engagement and marketing campaign development.
Why embedding real time impact metrics was important
Implementing actual stats as a result of your contributions helps:
Remind the user that what they’re doing is not only helping the environment, but their wallet
The user feel more self aware to food waste levels at the individual and global level
Inspiration
Collecting and synthesizing ideas
I scoured the internet for as much information and ideas as I possibly could to get a better grasp of how Magic Pantry could function, as well as what it could look like.
The hearts of our design come from inspirations of brands and apps like Duolingo, Too Good To Go, and especially Cats and Soup.
From our Crazy 8’s, scanning our grocery items and classifying them as either used or discarded was the most immediate and logical feature. It targets our user’s main task which is to get points for using items before they expire and using them towards other recipes, then letting them see their impact real time.
To encourage users to continuously submit items towards reducing food waste, we added a local/global points leaderboard. We wanted to add some personalization to the experience so with every submission you receive points to customize your avatar.
Usability Testing
After finalizing our designs, we conducted five remote usability tests with peers, friends, and family to observe their feedback and interactions real time. The goal for this testing phase was to discover any flaws or improvements to our design, as well as to identify features and components our participants valued the most.
We asked participants to complete a few key tasks:
Scan a receipt to add it to their pantry
Use or discard certain items to add it to their recipe
Redeem their points and customize their cat
Use or discard items:
5/5 completed successfully
Appreciated diversity of features
Enjoyed informational bullet points and overlay
Findings
Sketches
Crazy 8’s, rapid thinking, and solutions
It’s time to generate solutions. We utilized the Crazy 8 method to spitfire ideas as a team for some rapid thinking which helps us boil down our idea to its most succinct point. We set a 1-minute timer per section and got messy.
There seemed to be a common idea which was a pantry in which you can store and categorize items, as well as an option to scan your grocery items.
