There is too much food left over at the end of the day that has nowhere to go. The cost and labor for disposal of that food is a major pain for corporate cafeterias. How can we reduce or redirect that food in a way that does not require excess labor and resources?
An interface that allows all employees the opportunity to take home leftover meals and ingredients at the end of the day. This consisted of a consumer-facing mobile experience and a kitchen-facing tablet application to track and mark orders for donation.
With our prompt in hand, the team started our initial discovery and research to understand key considerations and opportunities to explore. We also met with our stakeholder to understand her research and findings in the subject area.
Consumers enjoy having a plethora of choices but kitchens feel pressure to make everything look full constantly. Self-serving also opens up the risk for leftover food that ends up in the trash.
The kitchen staff are constantly busy from prepping the food in the morning to cleaning up at the end of the day. We have to consider the kitchen’s workload for any solution we create.
Meals that are served have a 2-4 hour window for donation in most states. Otherwise if the food has been properly stored, that timer expands to almost a week.
Post-work exhaustion can lead to take-out dinners or ordering in at the end of the night. Even those with the energy to cook, often have to run to the grocery store.
There are many types of ordering applications out on the app store. Our team analyzed existing products and features that work well and where we could improve others .`
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Visual Design - displaying food in an aesthetic manner helps users make decisions.
Order Tracking - users want to know where and when they can expect orders to arrive or complete.
Gamification - aids with users understanding new concepts or the impact of their actions.
For Consumers - create a simple ordering system that also rewards its use
.For Kitchen - provide a method of tracking waste and orders.
We transformed our insights from our discovery session into features for our applications. For both the mobile and tablet experience, we plotted out user journeys and requirements for success.
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With our competitor analysis and research session on possible solutions, we set out to craft our experience with these goals in mind.
We wanted to provide employees with the opportunity for a quick meal at a discounted price.
47 million people in the US face hunger (Feeding America). Corporate cafeterias generate many meals and instead of them going to waste, we want to ensure they are enjoyed.
1. Placing Orders
2. Order Tracking
3. Order Pick-Up
Orders are labeled to indicate whether they have been picked up by the user or are still being prepared in the kitchen. Any orders not picked up by a specified time will be designated for donation. Users can view recipes directly from the "Orders" screen.
Our concept to increase user engagement was to provide points to users depending on the number of items in their order. Those points would go towards a leaderboard to showcase how much food waste users have redirected in comparison to their peers. We were also looking into the points being redeemable for company swag.
Users would scan their receipts to notify the kitchen that the order has been picked-up. This is also how they would claim their points to make their way up the leaderboard.
This screen showcases insights into food waste trends, pick-up rates, and donation rates. This provides the kitchen staff data they can leverage to propose additional solutions and gauge their success with this program.
The order view can be easily segmented into current and completed orders for convenient review. Each order is tagged by status, allowing users to quickly assess the order's progress.
A timeline feature indicates the order's position in the kitchen, providing transparency about its status.
Additionally, an expiration timer is activated once food is marked as ready for pickup, ensuring that all items remain safe for consumption upon donation.
This tool optimized our work during this Hackathon. We were able to quickly create and label components to be reused throughout our designs.
For our work on Kwik Kitz, our team received an award for Best Design Prototype for the Hackathon!
We originally set out to make an informational experience that educated kitchen staff on the importance of their role in mitigating food waste. We came to quickly understand the stress that solution would place on its target audience halfway through our Hackathon time. This experience taught me to understand problems as a system of many different variables.
Without a clear goals in mind, the project can get easily muddled. It's important to take the time to confirm next steps in order to carve the path you will take!
With more time, I would’ve loved to explore micro-interactions and animation to craft a satisfying interactive experience.
With the tight timeline, we were unable to fully build out our ideas for gamification and education. With more time, I’d like to explore how we can incorporate learning experience design into our application subtly.
I'd love to collaborate with you! Whether your product involves research or design, I'll dive in and keep your project moving.