Frima
Inventory management app designed to reduce food waste.
Overview.
Our goal was to make the process of managing pantry more accessible and welcoming, making the user feel like they are making a change by reducing food wastage. Complex inventory management becomes a pain-point for the end user. To solve this problem we designed a solution which relies heavily on automation of this process, which we believed would increase the user's retention rate and make the experience enjoyable.
Duration: 4 months
Team: 3 members
Skills: Contextual Inquiry, User Flows, Personas, Affinity Mapping, Prototyping, User Testing.
Tools: Miro, Figma, Google Forms, Zoom
Motivation.
An estimated 31 percent of the U.S. food supply is lost to retail and consumer side food waste, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Using an app to create a virtual inventory of what items are present and when they were added to aid in our goal to alert you as food items begin to spoil to curb the problem of food going to waste.
Research Questions.
Does automation of inventory management help reduce the amount of food the users waste?
Can the food wastage be reduced with the help of recipe suggestions which include products in the inventory about to expire?
Can a pantry management app make the user feel like they are making a change by reducing food wastage?
Contextual Inquiry.
The interview process started with developing a questionnaire based on the observed problems, understanding of the solution would be taken into consideration by the audience. A total of 16 interviews were conducted along with a demographic which included people with a wide range of serving occupations to students.
Survey + Online Interviews
16 participants
Ages 19 - 45
Location: United States, India, France
Affinity Mapping
265 cards were derived from the interview process to be considered for Affinity Mapping. The grouping was done in a step by step process which leads us to 3 levels of grouping through which we could derive our conclusions
Interpretation.
Almost the same amount of our users have a fixed meal schedule as with not fixed meal schedules
Most of our users find cooking to be a task but would like to try new recipes
Our users shop either once or twice a week
Almost everyone agrees that they would like an external system to manage their inventory without an auto-renewal feature
Every user tries to not waste or to minimize the wastage of food
Target Users
Students
Want to try out new recipes rather than eating outside which would help them manage their inventory and expenses.
• Recipe Suggestions
• Customization
• Expiry Date based recipes
Single Living Individuals
With an everlasting issue of managing their inventory, they would like to remember expiry dates as well as try out new recipes.
• Expiration Date Reminders
• Restock whenever utilized
Working Individuals
On top of a hectic schedule, managing their eating habits and expiry dates is a hectic task to undertake
• Restock list auto-populated
• Scan Receipt/Barcode
• Enter Items manually if skipped
Personas
Primary Persona
Secondary Persona
Anti Persona
Information Architecture
Paper Wireframes.
Digital Wireframes.
Digital Wireframes with Links.
Hi-Fi Prototype.
User Testing.
Total 6 participants
Use Cases:
Interpretations:
Color does not match with the product idea.
Making the buttons more visible.
The main menu felt out of position
Impact of the life score on every meal rather than just the overall score.
Customization option for recipes to give more control to the user.
Manual entry button after scanning of receipt to give users more options.
Redesign.
Inventory Management
Allows the user to scan recipes directly from app.
The users can also manual edit and make any changes they want to the list.
The app also allows users to scan barcode of an item to add it in the inventory.
This eliminates a user problem of manually entering each item.
Recipes.
The app suggests recipes based on the inventory.
It shows the impact of a recipe on the Life Score of the user.
Categorizes recipes in breakfast, lunch and dinner.
Users can customize the recipe by adding/removing items
It automatically updates the user’s inventory based on ingredients used.
Life Score
Generates the user’s Life Score based on their food wastage.
Allows users to improve their Life Score by suggesting recipes.
Users can set weekly goals for calorie consumption.
Provides a history on the products consumed.
Understanding the Life Score (In-App Gamification Feature)
Why?
People often like to see how they are performing in a particular domain. This can greatly improve the user experience and encourage users to continue using the application, invest more time carrying out tasks. Indeed, being told how they’re doing can spur them on to involve themselves at a deeper level.
How?
Life Score provides an opportunity for the user to be incentivized through managing his waste based on the support the application provides. The amount of wastage that the user is forced to throw alongside how many of the groceries have been fully utilized is used to determine the score. The score helps the user incentivize in terms of grocery coupons or any other relatable reward. This helps the user in being more focused on the task at hand which is reducing waste. The incentivization helps the user to have another goal in mind which would enable him to deeply invest himself in the process which the application outlines for him.
How would I test the solution with more time?
Number of Recipes Used -
I would like to track how many users are actually using recipes that the application suggests so as to maintain a data point entry for how much the users are taking action.
Positive/Negative Life Score -
Tracking the Life Score of the user testing group would enable me to understand how the feature is being utilized by the audience. It would help me in understanding if incentivizing a goal is enabling the user to stay more focused on the task.
Restock? -
The number of times the user has restocked his list according to the inventory usage/suggestion would help me understand the metrics of how the user is perceiving the thought of doing his entire grocery list online and not rely on manual methods.
Is the User Scanning the Receipt/Barcode? -
The actual usage of a number of scanned receipts/barcodes depends on a lot of back-end capabilities, but the usage would help track how much the user has been accustomed to the new system enabling him to cut down on the time spent in manual input.