Project Background

I participated in a Florida-based Hackathon called Food Future Hack between March 4, 2022 and March 6, 2022. The hackathon was a part of Food Waste Prevention Week. I worked as a product designer; I designed and prototyped a mobile app to plan meal to help people reduce food waste. As a result, I won Best Tech (University Track).

Challenge

The challenge for this hackathon was to find inventive solutions to help everyday people reduce their food waste which. The goal was to help people save money, reduce hunger, and protect the environment. Reducing food waste was identified as the #1 personal action with highest impact to reduce carbon emissions based on research by Project Drawdown. There is a high demand for innovative ideas, processes and initiatives to solve this global issue.

Conduct Research

Since this hackathon happened at the same time as my LiveFresh project, I used both surveys and interviews conducted for research for my LiveFresh project. I wanted to investigate additional solutions for problems related to food waste.

Defining user needs & difficulties

About 32% of people surveyed said they buy too much food

From the user research survey, I found that about 32% of people surveyed said that the primary cause of their food waste came from buying too much food. This lead me to think about what can help people to buy less food, and how they can interact with the solution.

About 80% of people surveyed think that reducing food waste is important

An additional observation I found from the survey was that a large majority people care about reducing food waste. This data supports that this project is something meaningful that is worth addressing.

After reviewing the data, I came up with the problem statement: “How might we help people improve their grocery buying habit in order to reduce food waste.” My idea was to focus on giving people more access to plan their grocery buying habits so that they are empowered to reduce food waste.

Empathy Map

User Persona

Wireframes

Solution

PrepPeroni is an application dedicated to meal planning based on ingredients that the user already has at home. Users can plan meals before they go grocery shopping, or use the app reactively to find meals while they are actively shopping. PrepPeroni is a solution that intends to work with users existing grocery shopping habits and gives them tools to make informed shopping decisions.

Interactive Prototype

Reflection

1. Iteration is key: I learned that even designing an app (not even getting to building) can be extremely time consuming; it's important to start small and iteratively build from there.

2. Teamwork is important : Because my teammates were available for only half of the hackathon, I had to finish the project by myself. Designing is so much harder without help from teammates (even non-designers!) to bounce ideas, and critique my work. The perfect design doesn’t come on the first attempt, so getting feedback during the design process helps narrow down what works and what doesn’t.

3. I did it! I felt grateful to have a chance to join this Hackathon. Even though it was tough, painful, and time consuming, I was able to complete the project in just two days. I was surprised that I won the Hackathon, but I deserved it. 😊

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