Corporate cafeterias often waste large quantities of food due to buffet-style lunches, resulting in high costs from wasted ingredients and labor. During this Hackathon, my team developed a mobile interface to transform surplus food into convenient grab-and-go meals, reducing waste and cutting costs.
Let's take that leftover food, package it, and allow office workers to take those home for dinner. We gave users the options between leftover ingredients in the kitchen and prepared meals that you pop in the microwave. Our end solution consisted of a consumer-facing mobile app and kitchen-facing tablet app.
The team dove into client calls, inspiration boards, and case studies. We first thought of training staff to accurately portion items at the buffet but realized it was only a Band-Aid solution to a larger system at play. With half of our first day gone, we hard pivoted after lunch and brainstormed ways to re-route leftover food from the garbage to those who need it.
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My teammate and I took the insights gained from our exploration and translated them into screens that would meet our desired features. We aimed to create an ordering application that would enable employees to order any leftover meals from lunch and pick them up at the end of the workday. This included both a mobile user-facing app and a tablet kitchen-facing app for managing orders. Once the features were thought out, we divided the tasks, with my focus on designing the ordering screens, cart functionality, and order management for the tablet application.
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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.
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.
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.
This screen showcases KPIs that provide insights into food waste, pick-up rates, and donation rates, encouraging kitchens to be more mindful of their waste and to set goals for reducing it effectively.
Through this project, I learned how to collaborate effectively with another designer, dividing tasks based on our respective specialties. We utilized auto-layout and components to streamline the design process, resulting in efficient and cohesive outputs. Our efforts were recognized with the Cargill Award for Best Design Prototype.
Given more time, we would aim to develop our product into a fully functioning prototype that includes animations and micro-interactions. Additionally, we would like to incorporate gamification elements to help users understand the impact of their actions. Enhancing the pick-up experience with interactive wayfinding features would further improve the process of locating orders.