MealPal
TEAM:
2 Researchers, 2 Product Designers
PROJECT TYPE:
MCHI+D Project, 2024
(10 weeks)
MY ROLE:
Lead UX Designer
OUTPUT:
TAGS: UX Research, Design strategy, Prototyping, Wireframing, UI Design
How might we help college students in Seattle manage their meals effectively to reduce food waste?
CHALLENGE
Food waste is a pressing societal issue needing innovative solutions. Inspired by food insecurity in Seattle, our team designed a project to tackle food waste among college students.
RESULT
Centered around a smart fridge interface, MealPal provides tailored meal planning, budget-friendly options, and structured scheduling to fit busy student lifestyles. This is an exploratory product to help students manage meals and reduce waste.
OVERVIEW
Discovery
I conducted literature reviews, diary studies, and contextual inquiries to understand students' food waste behaviors.
Ideation
After generating 120 ideas, we narrowed down using design principles and evaluation techniques, developing 3 concepts.
Prototyping
Explored preliminary ideas to define the main navigation and essential screens for the meal planning process.
Usability Testing
Using paper prototypes and think-aloud protocols, I iterated and refined critical issues in the user flow.
Result
The UI design was informed by vibrant, organic, and youthful cues to create a final meal planning assistant.
Discovery
Food Waste Statistics
Concerned about food insecurity in Seattle, I reviewed literature to understand current issues, trends, and gaps, finding that college students significantly contribute to food waste. To explore their food behaviors, I created a research plan outlining our research methods: diary studies and contextual inquiries. I conducted a kitchen interview, observing food management practices. This provided qualitative data on their processes, motivations, challenges, and desires, helping to fill gaps in the data from my secondary research. This also informed a preliminary stakeholder map.
Data Analysis + Key Findings
To manage the complex qualitative data, I used affinity mapping to group overlapping patterns and themes across participants, prioritizing the most common pain points and desired outcomes. It was clear that college students struggle with meal preparation due to busy schedules, financial constraints, and limited cooking skills. This led to our design challenge which focused on meal planning to address portion control, structure, and maintaining an affordable, healthy diet.
DESIGN CHALLENGE
How might we help college students in Seattle manage their meals effectively to reduce food waste?
ASSUMPTIONS
College students want to manage their food using meal-planning
College students are living alone for the first time and still learning to manage their food consumption
College students have limited skills, knowledge, and experience with planning and cooking meals
Ideation
Design Principles
To guide the evaluation process and team alignment, we established 5 design principles based on our key findings. I strongly advocated for 2 principles: to support a circular economy to proactively reduce food waste (holistic angle), and to also integrate fun and play into a students busy life.
Brainstorming
Using the design challenge, I generated 30 ideas and collectively we had 120 concepts to explore. Aiming for breadth in this stage fostered creative thinking and diverse perspectives to tackle our problem space. I grouped similar ideas into themes to begin concept review and evaluation.
Down-selection
In order to situate the ideas along the different stages, I suggested to map them along the spectrum of the food life cycle (production, consumption, disposal) to contextualize the design intervention. Using our Design Principles, DeBono's "Six Thinking Hats" and dot voting, we narrowed down to 6 ideas, which were combined into 3 final directions for further exploration.
Storyboarding
I led strategy development for each concept, focusing on the functionality, rationale, and outcome. Out of all 3 storyboards, the chosen one – SmartFridge, addresses students' meal planning challenges with a convenient, customizable, budget-friendly system that includes food redistribution. It was deemed most feasible to build, envisioned for future integration in student apartments.
Prototyping
After discussing the necessary screens for the journey, I created an Information Architecture map to define the main navigation structure and the specific screens and information needed. This map facilitated the development of User Flows for 3 key paths, including the initial meal planning flow I built. I recommended designing the primary interface for a landscape touchscreen on the fridge to accommodate students' school schedules for the meal planning experience. I created a paper prototype to test this flow!
Usability Testing
To evaluate users' perceptions of the concept's usability, comprehension, and functionality, we used a mixed-methods research approach combining paper prototypes, naturalistic observation, and think-aloud protocols. I moderated 2 interviews and iterated screens using the RITE method based on participant feedback to improve the flow. A coded spreadsheet helped extract overarching themes and patterns, revealing that participants struggled with 3 critical parts of the meal planning flow.
Key Finding: Users have different mental models of meal planning, such as batch cooking versus single meals.
Solution: Added a preference setting allowing users to customize the number of meals they want to plan, enhancing personalization.
Key Finding: Navigation errors were occurring in the meal planning flow, indicating a need to simplify the process and reduce cognitive load.
Solution: Integrated an engaging weekly quiz system that adapts to students' changing needs and schedules, offering a more manageable and feasible meal planning process.
Key Finding: The initially proposed transactional redistribution process between students raises questions and may not be necessary.
Insight: The transactional nature of a community food market inadvertently reinforces student isolation, contradicting its intended community-building purpose. Studies show that loneliness significantly affects students' mental health.
Solution: Proposed a Community Donation Bin and weekly Meal Party where students donate surplus produce and cook together, reducing waste and fostering community. This approach fosters social connections among students while also helping reduce food waste on campus.
Result
User Interface
Drawing on my graphic design and branding expertise, I led the user interface design, crafting a UI System that resonated with our users' lifestyles and needs. We developed a vision for the visual interface using imagery, colors, and elements inspired by fresh produce, an organic hand-drawn aesthetic, and the youthful attitudes of college students. These visual cues created a compelling and appealing narrative for a fun meal assistant.
Reflection
Lessons Learned:
Ask broader questions to contextualize
Gain a comprehensive understanding of the overall context and environment by asking interview questions that explore the broader needs and experiences of college students
Narrow the project scope
Limit the focus to a specific part of the process, such as planning or cooking, rather than tackling both.
Next Steps:
Improve the experience
Alternate device: Adapt the experience for a mobile app to enhance usability and convenience.
Expand features: Currently, the smart fridge can only track produce, excluding pantry and dry items.
Evaluate the impact
Cooking approach: Determine how many meals students can realistically prepare during batch cooking sessions.
Behavioral Impact: Evaluate whether the meal planning tool influences participants' meal planning habits and reduces food waste.
Shift towards a circular economy
Donate surplus to food banks: Incorporate a system for donating surplus food to local food banks and those in need