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Xpiry

Food waste reduction in households.

Food bank usage has been high during the pandemic. Created Xpiry as a capstone project to confront how to help household consumers make use of good ingredients before they expire.

 

A mobile digital application was made to showcase how to use good ingredients before they go to waste.  The application includes features such as AI technology that matched recipes to available ingredients.

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Summary

MY CONTRIBUTIONS:

  • Conducted primary and secondary research

  • Synthesized and helped formulate “how might we” statements

  • Designed high fidelity wireframes segments in Figma

  • Fused the prototype together for clarity to showcase to stakeholders

MY ROLE:

User Experience Designer & Lead Interface Designer

DATE:

January - April 2021

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PROBLEM SPACE

Problem Space

Stage 1: RESEARCH AND DISCOVERY

  • Conducted user interviews with two main target audiences (household food purchasers/ food insecure individuals)

  • Used an empathy map and journey map to draw out common pain points and selected an area of focus (food expiry dates on ingredients)

INSIGHTS FROM RESEARCH

  • Food wasted can be linked to not having enough time to learn how to best monitor/store food products in a pantry.

  • Users want to reduce good food waste. 

  • Users want to use existing ingredients in their pantry to make healthier meals. 

QUOTES FROM PRIMARY INTERVIEWS:


How to combat food waste? (Theme: Wasteful)
“I probably experience food waste every week” - (household user)  

How to stretch good food? (Theme: Shame)
"To ask for help, there is shame and negative stigmas attached." - (food insecure user) 

These insights and quotes directed the group to dive deeper into a food ingredient tracking system.

Synthesis +Ideation

Stage 2: SYNTHESIS OF INFORMATION 

 

Synthesized research data using the coding method and formed six "how might we statements." as a guide to narrow solution paths.

 

"How might we establish a system to track items in stock so that people who are responsible for purchasing food for their household and food insecure individuals can waste less food? "

HYPOTHESIS

SYNTHESIS: 

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"Jobs to be done" 

7 idea

cards

IDEA 

SCORECARD 

Storyboard 

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storyboard.png
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Drew images of the solutions to further flush out concepts​

Measured ideas in three categories; desirability, viability and feasibility. ​

Mapped goals to see relationships between business and end user objectives.

Analyzed how to get structured feedback from end users.

IDEATION NARROWING:

IDEATION

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Stage 3: CREATION OF SOLUTIONS

.

Using the brain writing method to brainstorm food expiry solutions. 

Ideation
FINAL PROTOTYPE:

Stage 4 & 5: PROTOTYPE & EVALUATE

TECHNOLOGICAL TREND:

•  Image Recognition: scans food and recognizes the food freshness

•  Using AI image recognition in apps has become more popular and there various databases using AI technology

CONSUMER TREND:

•  Users are willing to use technology to reduce food waste.

•  Majority of users have used and are familiar with AI application  with image recognition.

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Created a task flow to understand the flow between screens which allowed all group members to understand the complex relationships and architecture of how to build the high fidelity wireframes in Figma.

Explored how AI image recognition could be embedded into a digital application with a task diagram. 

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  • Created low fidelity wireframes to examine the user interface experience.  

  • Established a mood board for brand consistency and allowed all group members to be on the same page quickly.  

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Final Prototype
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Phone Screen
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Your best food to good use

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Banana Bread
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Phone Screen
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Phone Screen
LOOKING BACK

​​The biggest challenge in this project was finding food insecurity testimonials, perhaps due to the stigma attached. I was able to overcome this by leveraging my social network and ensuring the trust of the user through a consent form.

Our second challenge was finding the best solution to link our hypothesis ideals to a workable prototype. Specifically getting the ingredient list on hand using the best available technology versus known behaviour of usage. To overcome this, it was in our primary research segment, when we spoke to an engineer in the field to learn about technical trends. This led us to understand about Artificial Intelligence and its mass use in many applications. The ability to pull data and link with IOT technology to populate a quick and efficient response. This suited our goals of efficient and easy to use capturing of ingredients on hand. 

The big takeaways was the sense of community and e-commerce abilities that can be formed.

Emotional

Innovation

People

(Desirability)

Business

(Viability)

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Process

Innovation

Experience

Innovation

Functional

Innovation

Technology

(Feasability)

Looking Back
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