A personal food manager
for everyone.
Overview
Food+ is an iOS application that helps users to reduce their food waste by suggesting recipes based on what they have in their pantry.
Role
Duration
Nov 2022 - Ongoing
Project Type
Personal Project
The Problem
Today, an estimated one-third of all the food produced in the world goes to waste. That’s equal to about 1.3 billion tons - every year.
Wasted food isn't just a social or humanitarian concern—it's an environmental one. When we waste food, we also waste all the energy and water it takes to grow, harvest, transport, and package it.
Food that goes to the landfill and rots, produces methane—a greenhouse gas even more potent than carbon dioxide. About 6%-8% of all human-caused greenhouse gas emissions could be reduced if we stop wasting food.
In the US alone, the production of lost or wasted food generates the equivalent of 32.6 million cars’ worth of greenhouse gas emissions.
Research & Explorations
Food waste occurs in a variety of settings, and the causes for it vary greatly depending on the sector of society. As a result, I spent nearly a week researching the key causes of food waste in order to choose my target sector and gain a deeper understanding of the problem.
I was able to observe from the above map that most other sectors have some sort of recycling system in place, and that the majority of food waste is created directly by families, so I decided to do some user research and gather more data to learn more about the primary causes of food waste.
Understanding the problem
As a member of a normal Indian household, I understand some of the causes for food waste. I wanted to confirm these issues, so I conducted user interviews with roughly 10 to 20 people to see what works and what doesn't.
The following are some of the questions I posed during the interviews:
How often do you go grocery shopping?
When getting groceries / food, what factors do you think about?
Do you cook at home frequently?
What are your plans for the leftovers?
How can you know when a product is past its expiration date?
Do you plan your grocery shopping?
The amount of food you throw away on a weekly basis
Do you spoil an item by storing it in the cupboard and not realising it's there?
What is the primary cause of food waste in your household?
Do you think having a grocery list would help you waste less food?
Do you follow online recipes while cooking?
User personas
Based on my study, I identified three primary user groups for whom my solution attempted to solve problems.
The Product Vision
Based on the research and user pain points I decided to create an app that :
Helps in managing the groceries at home.
Suggests recipes based on items present at the household.
Has collaboration in managing pantry.
Helps in creating shopping lists.
Ideation & Sitemap
I decided to use an impact matrix to organise all my ideas by priority. At first I had a small number of ideas for the project, but eventually when I started working on a few more better ideas came to me and I added them to the matrix
After gathering all the ideas for the application I created the application sitemap.
Design Language
I followed apple’s Human Interface Guidelines to make the application more consistent and memorable. Accessibility and inclusivity were the key factors taken into considerations while deciding upon the the language.
Design
I decided to divide the entire application in 3 sections :
Pantry Section ( Home page )
Community Section ( Recipes Collections )
Shopping Section ( Shopping Lists )
This helped me to think more clearly on how to design the entire application in an organised manner.
Instead of using a straightforward flat design, I decided to experiment with glassmorphism approaches because Apple already had native components like as system material sheets with various blur intensities. I was particularly intrigued by Apple's BigSur design makeover for MacOS and wanted to explore what other interesting looks I could come up with using the same theme.
Unique Ideas for this Application
Connections
The user can add connection that will sync all the items present in the pantry for all the members in the house, so that each member can see all the items present at the house and can plan their meal.
This is specifically helpful where all the members have different working shifts and want to cook something fast.
Pantry Score
This is a score indicated against each recipe that shows how many ingredients are available at the pantry for that recipe.
Pantry Section
The idea was simple, let the users know where they have stored food and notify them when it was about to expire.
From the user research I found that 87% of users usually store items at three places fridge, freezer and cupboard, hence decided to distinguish items based on their storage location and changed the colors of items stored at different locations.
Each item card provides key information like Item name, quantity, expiry date and were sorted according to their expiry date.
This details screen provides detailed information about the item, options to add and consume & suggested recipes for it.
Community Section
In this section I want the users to be able to find the recipe of their choice with ease.
This page shows a list of recommend recipes based on the users choice, just like the YouTube feed.
The most important feature in this screen is the powerful filter options that will help the users in finding the perfect recipe in no time.
The recipe card shows key informations like Preparation time, views, like, favourite, chef name, chef rating, etc.
The recipe details screen contains a brief about the recipe, basic user touch points like likes, dislike, share, etc.
This screen also contains the complete video demonstration of the recipe and its complete recipe in the form of a blog.
I also decided to include a large pantry score card that shows exactly what ingredients are missing for the specific recipe and lets the user add them to the shopping list with just a tap.
Shopping Section
This is one of the primary sections of the app, and I opted to fill it with all of the fundamental features that a user expects from a to-do list app and combine it with the app's core functionality.
To achieve that, I chose to take the following steps :
To simplify the number of steps for the task, I chose to provide the user with all of the fundamental capabilities without the need to go to the details screen unless they want to perform something particular.
I decided to make the list default to a checkbox list because it is more appropriate for the case.
I created a pinned list area on the screen so that the user could quickly see the important list.
I chose to add colour schemes to the shopping list so that the user can distinguish between various lists and to make the area a bit more colourful, breaking up the monotony of too many lists in the same hue.
I choose to include the option to collaborate on the list with the user's connections for real-time editing or to share the list with others by text message using any other app.
Profile Section
This section contains user profile, sign out option, connections, favourite recipes, subscription management, etc and all other legal materials of the application.
Project Future
As this project is continuing, I have a lot to contribute. I'm still working out the screens design language because I feel like I went a little far with it and need to tone it down. I also need to conduct usability testing, design for dark mode, etc.
Thank You
Hope you liked the project.
