As someone dedicated to reducing, reusing, and recycling, I wanted to explore the challenges people face when trying to minimize food waste at home. This involves effectively tracking existing groceries and expiration dates, identifying missing items, and monitoring consumption patterns. Alarmingly, the average US household throws out $200 worth of food per month. In addition to the significant financial loss for grocery shoppers, this waste strains natural resources and contributes to excessive environmental pollution. Starting as a student project, I decided to dive deeper and refine my solution after the conclusion of the course.
Jan 2018, revised 2020
Your essential mobile companion for saving time, money, and the environment. My Pantry offers an efficient and customizable food inventory system that is accessible on the go and shareable within your household. Easily track your groceries, monitor expiration dates, compile shopping lists, and estimate your spending – all in one place.
With the problem identified and a rough idea in mind, I needed to gain a better understanding of the market and audience. Given the project's constraints, I conducted focused research on apps with a similar purpose and examined existing user feedback. I audited competitor apps to evaluate their strengths and weaknesses, identified potential market gaps, and analyzed numerous reviews to understand current user experiences. Synthesizing this data, I extracted user needs and pain points to guide the direction for the new app.
I also used the findings to create three primary personas, inspired by real people who match my target audience. These personas helped me consider individual needs, behaviors, and goals throughout the design process, and they inspired user scenarios and potential opportunities for support.
Ready to ideate solutions, I created numerous quick sketches to explore layouts, prioritize content, and planned the information architecture using flowcharts.
Creating simple wireframes and a clickable prototype was an important step to get a feel for the design and catch issues early in the process.
It was time to create the first high-fidelity clickable prototype. I prepared my visual assets and components in Sketch and assembled the prototype.
With the prototype, I quickly discovered issues to address. I revisited the drawing board to simplify some flows, enhance UI ergonomics, improve accessibility, and enhance the overall visual experience. Informal user testing sessions and A/B tests guided my decisions throughout the process.
Research findings not only guided the app’s functional direction but also emphasized the role of visual design in user experience. Many users expressed a preference for clean design and the ability to organize content using a variety of colors. Feedback revealed that some struggle to read dark text on white backgrounds in bright, fluorescent-lit environments such as grocery stores. In response, I created both a dark and an off-white/warm background theme, along with a diverse color palette for categorization. Providing such flexibility presented challenges when selecting colors – from readability to ensuring overall harmony. The colors needed to define the app’s visual identity and effectively represent various food groups. If I had continued iterating, I would have simplified the main color palette.
When creating components, I followed iOS UI patterns/guidelines and carefully evaluated hit targets and font sizes. To infuse delight into the often stressful task of household organization, I went for friendly, lighthearted elements such as calm colors, rounded shapes, and encouraging messages.
