Case Study: Wastewise
A mobile food waste MVP solution designed for the non-profit Foodwise.
Client
Foodwise
My Role
Led Project Outline, Research Initiatives, UI Design, Prototyping
Timeline
3 Weeks
The Ask
Foodwise is looking for help in getting people to reduce food waste and wants to explore the role that technology could play in engagement and innovation.
Intro
The first milestone we worked towards for Foodwise was finding our Minimum Viable Product. I led our team through a series of research initiatives to uncover the insights that helped bring our mobile experience to life.
Work Overview
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We designed a survey to gauge demographic and behaviors around food waste and then got more qualitative data after conducting 6 interviews to learn more about the pain points and goals for users around food waste. We deducted takeaways and collaboratively use affinity mapping to uncover patterns and big picture insights to our problem.
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Defining the problem and the must have features
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user flow, sketching, wire frames, style guide
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Item description
Who Is Foodwise?
Foodwise is a non-profit dedicated to growing thriving communities through the power and joy of local food. They create exposure for the small farmer to their local community by connecting farmers to farmer’s markets in the Bay Area.
To understand the pain points and behaviors users experience with food waste, our team conducted 5 User Interviews and a Survey with 17 responses. We posed questions to help uncover how users feel, what obstacles they have, and what might motivate them to reduce their waste. Our goal was simply to discover what tools we could create that might most resonate with our user.
Survey Results
Research & Insights
35%
Of respondents said that 10-40% of food bought gets thrown away in their household
63%
Of respondents said saving money motivates them to reduce their food waste
13%
Of respondents said that they use composting as a way to prevent food waste
We used Affinity Mapping as a collaborative tool to uncover the key patterns from our interviews.
User Interview takeaways:
Understand food waste is a global issue, but if it cuts into their personal time, they won’t go out of their way to learn how to compost
Not wasting money is a key motivator to not waste food
They have a morality issue/guilty conscience with wasting food
“If it takes me more time I wouldn’t do it, I’m all about convenience even though I hate food waste ”
Persona
In order to better understand who our target audience is, our team developed a persona to humanize our user.
Josie Parker
“I wish I could have an easy lifestyle shift that can help me make more of an impact”
User Scenario
On Sunday night Josie is looking in the refrigerator and realizes she did not cook the majority of the food she bought for the week because they were eating out with friends and picking up after work. Now, she has to throw out the food and feels an overwhelming sense of guilt because she recently watched a documentary about food waste. She’s been meaning to start composting but doesn’t feel motivated enough or know where to start.
Demographics
Lives in San Francisco, CA
28
College graduate
Lives with a partner
Needs & Goals
Want to finish all the groceries they spent the time and money to buy
Want to feel like they are making a positive impact with their environmental concerns
Pain Points
Environmentally conscious habits take away from personal time
Overwhelmed about the resources available to compost
Feeling guilty about food waste
Lack of motivation to get started
Define
The Problem
As a team, we uncovered…
Users needs to be motivated to compost habitually so that they can reduce their waste without it taking up too much of their personal time and feel like they are making an impact.
So, How Might We….
Empower people to move from empathy to actionable steps about food waste by providing tools and resources [about composting] that are simple and easy to use?
Make it more convenient for people to reduce food waste?
Provide incentives to motivate people to reduce waste and to form habitual behaviors
Solving to our Solution
As a team, we uncovered…
We will design an app focused on on the go incentives that make users feel accomplished to reduce their personal waste
