Food Waste Tracking & Ordering

Role

UX Designer
UX Researcher

Toods & Methods

Figma, Figjam, Slack, Research, Wireframing, Sketching, Prototyping, Invision, Google Drive, Google Slides

OVERVIEW

My team and I worked collaboratively together with tackling a food waste problem space. We were given 1 week to research, synthesize and develop a high-fidelity prototype. Our focus was to dive deeper into the food waste problem with restaurant owners.

Background

How might we help restaurant owners better understand and manage their food inventory to prevent over-ordering resulting in wasted food and potential revenue?

Problem Space

Restaurants are responsible for 9% of all of Canada’s food waste - 35.5 million metric tonnes. 3.2 million metric tonnes is food inventory that goes unused prior to cooking.

PRIMARY & SECONDARY RESEARCH

Food service industry data indicates that the proportion of food purchased that becomes waste is significant .

Statistic

21% of dairy, eggs, and field crops
38% of the produce
20% of meat

According to a Second Harvest report, based on consumer value, the amount of food wasted in Canada in 2016 could’ve fed every person living in Canada for almost 5 months

Finding

Pain Points

The cost of food rising
Length of time it takes to do inventory
Sales predictions are time-consuming or inaccurate
Management and access to easy-to-use applications

Interview Insights

PROCESS & ITERATION

Persona

Here’s what it looks like for Sadie to manage inventory at her large-scale restaurant.

She has to create a sales forecast based on past trends.
She inputs the data on a spreadsheet to reference.
Sadie then has to check and record the current inventory on the printed spreadsheets.
Then she inputs that data into the spreadsheet on the computer.
Using the sales forecast, and accounting for current inventory, she places the order for stock.
Once the order arrives, Sadie has to receive the order, sign off on the invoice, and then organize the order to be put away

Based on our primary research, we came up with our user persona Sadie, she is a kitchen manager who takes pride in running a strong restaurant. She is organized, passionate, and self-motivated. She wants to spend less time and energy managing food stock and gets lost in a lot of wording

Mapping the Story

After she puts away the order, she must ensure the old stock gets placed in front of the new stock.
Sadie then references her sales forecast for the day to see what should be prepped for the day’s business.
The food must then be prepped for line assembly to use at lunch/dinner.
Foods that were over-ordered, and consequently over-prepped, result in food waste and lost revenue.

Mapping the Story (Continued)

Based on our user map, we knew we wanted to create a fluid, interface that would help streamline the lengthy inventory processes for Sadie and track our sales history, which would result in more precise orders being placed. We also wanted to implement a system that notified the kitchen staff on what food in their inventory was almost past their sell-by dates. These key features will reduce the amount of food that is getting thrown out in your restaurant.

Key Features

Here are our initial iterations. We wanted to sketch our key features and how the components could appear. Our goal was to make our platform very clean and simple to use especially where our users would need to implement staff training and time to train equals money. To do that we wanted to incorporate familiar functions that we see and use in our everyday social media apps to avoid user frustration. So we incorporated pop-ups similar to IOS functions, and a scanning screen we’ve seen and used before, and icons that are very easy to identify.

Sketches

This is the mood board that we illustrated to capture the tone and the style that we are communicating with NoScraps. We are trying to get a very contemporary, yet very simple aesthetic. We are Including comfortable colors and just help simplify the inventory process through these visual inspirations.

Mood Board

This is our flowchart that illustrates a simple but organized flow. There's a simple login and signup flow. The landing page is the universal hub that encapsulates each main category like Inventory, historical data, and order page. Each of those sections leads to more features that the user is able to use.

Prototype Flow

Putting it all together, our high-fidelity prototype of No Scraps was created. We have components of the app that allow the user to check on their historical data, inventory levels, a sales forecast, and options for ordering and receiving inventory orders.

One of the main functions of the app is the ability for a restaurant owner to review, input, and update their inventory.

Another key element to reduce food waste on the app is the calendar function, which allows the user to see a monthly visual overview of the inventory status and will notify the user before and when a product is going bad.

PROTOTYPE

Inventory Management

Placing Orders

Uploading Vendor Receipts

CONCLUSION

Likes

Clean, easy to navigate, good contrast
Manual input options
Icons, layout, flow
Good visual management organizer

Dislikes

Disconnect and lack of understanding of the difference between “Inventory” and “Ordering”
Required background knowledge on the specific wording of select buttons/features

User Testing Takeaways

More inclusive wording for everyone to understand and provide a better flow on how we would input a received order. If we were to continue working on this app our next steps would be to use historical data for sales history and forecast to the sales forecast

When asked where would you go to add an order into our system? People clicked inventory instead of “order” which would have led to our scan function.

Next Steps

Click here to see the full high-fidelity prototype.

Adding Low Inventory