FiFo
ux design, ui design, user research
Raise your hand if you've been personally victimized by expired yogurt hiding in the back of the fridge. 🙋🏽♀️
(I should forewarn you that there will be more Mean Girls references throughout this case study. I couldn't resist!)
Project Overview
Role: User Researcher, UX Designer
Project Duration: 4 months
Tools Used: Figma, Miro, Maze
Problem
American households waste nearly 32% of the food they purchase each year, leading to an estimated annual loss of $2,000 per household. This significant waste not only impacts household budgets but is often driven by challenges in pantry and fridge organization, which can lead to unnecessary duplicate purchases.
Solution
Develop a collaborative tool that enables users to track food items by expiration date, allowing household members to add or remove items within the app to reduce waste and streamline pantry organization.
Research
Surveys
Through secondary research, I identified that the top three categories of food frequently discarded are leftovers from home-cooked meals, fresh produce, and restaurant leftovers. To understand real-world experiences with food waste, I used screener surveys to recruit participants for in-depth interviews.
Participant profile:
-
Primary or secondary grocery shoppers for their household
-
Dispose of food more than once a week
-
Motivated to reduce household food waste
-
Interested in saving money
Interviews
I selected five qualified participants and conducted Zoom interviews to explore their food planning, shopping, cooking, and storage habits. While all aimed to reduce waste, they faced challenges like time constraints, miscommunication, and limited knowledge. I synthesized these insights into affinity diagrams, empathy maps, and personas.
"I usually forget what I purchase, then I just end up buying more of the same thing."
Jabari G.
"I'm not sure of the difference between best-by date and sell-by date."
Taite S.
We throw away produce most often and that's what most expensive.
Brandon G.
How Might We?
To synthesize my research and pinpoint key user challenges, I crafted "How Might We" statements to guide solution development:
-
How might we promote better refrigerator and pantry organization?
-
How might we increase user awareness of previously purchased items?
-
How might we encourage users to use food before it spoils?
Ideation & Design
User Stories
To focus on what users would find most valuable, I prioritized key user stories:
-
View purchased items to prevent duplicate buying
-
Track expiration dates to use items before they spoil
-
Share a household profile for collective visibility of available foods
-
Monitor financial losses from spoiled food to understand the cost of waste
Mapping and Card Sorting
I recruited three participants for a card sorting session to understand how users categorize key terms, making it easier to organize the app's basic functions into a cohesive site map.
Next, I identified three primary user pathways based on needs from the user interviews. These routes were essential to the app’s core functionality and purpose:
-
View purchase history
-
Add a new member to the household profile
-
Check foods nearing their expiration date
Wireframing
After sketching, I created low-fidelity wireframes in Figma. A few iterations in, I decided to shift the visual direction to enhance continuity and align most pages with an F-pattern for easier scanning.
Hi-Fidelity Screens
Addressing a problem with financial implications can often feel overwhelming. To counter this, I developed a brand and style guide that makes the product approachable, empowering, creative, and optimistic, helping users feel motivated and supported as they take steps to reduce waste.
Testing
I conducted two rounds of remote usability testing: an initial round for conversational feedback and a second to capture heatmaps of users’ interactions. Eleven participants, including three from the original interview group, participated.
Objective:
-
Identify usability issues
-
Gather user feedback on their app experience
-
Assess ease of navigation
Tasks:
-
Locate the purchase date for ground chicken
-
Add a new household member
-
Check how many days remain until the carrots expire
Overall, participants found the experience easy, organized, and straightforward, successfully completing all tasks, both directly and indirectly along the expected path. However, a few issues required attention.
Critical Issue #1: One participant noted confusion about an image's meaning, revealing that none of the images had titles—an accessibility issue for users relying on text-to-speech.
Critical Issue #2: On the My Household page, six participants struggled to locate the 'add' icon for adding new members.
Iterations
